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What happened:
Audio provocateur
DJ /rupture assumed his mildmannered, Harvard-educated
Jace Clayton persona to track
down Sweat.X front man
Spoek Mathambo for us.
The South African duo (one
white, one black) describe
themselves as “both Jewish,
half-brothers, and liars,” says
Jace. “So on the phone I said
‘Are you Jewish?’ Silence.
‘Am I Jewish?’ ‘Yes. That’s the
question.’ ‘You know man,
over here you can get killed
for asking a question like that!’
Awkward pause. ‘Well, I’m
from Brooklyn, we are kinda
direct around here!’”

What happened: In her senior
year of college, Krisanne
Johnson ventured to South
Africa to photograph postApartheid youth culture.
“Once you go to South Africa,
you just want to go back,”
says Johnson. Ten years later,
she returned to photograph
the kwaito scene. Although
she was familiar with kwaito,
she wasn’t quite prepared for
the all night block parties in
Alexandra township where
neighborhood kids, kwaito
musicians and middle aged
businessmen dance until the
morning before going right
back to the office. Her future
plans? “Try to get back to
Africa as soon as I can.”

What happened: In addition
to designing the opening four
pages of the features section,
Parisian designer Jérémy
Bégel lent us his custom font
to use as opening letters for
each feature. In order to shine
a light on the complicated
musical landscape of Africa,
Bégel undertook a crash
course in all things African.
“I knew about artists like
Amadou et Mariam and Cheb
Mami,” he says, “but I made
some amazing discoveries
while listening to the artists
on the map.” Seeking to
create a visual that was
equal parts functional guide
and chic was a learning
experience as well. “I admit it,”
he says, “I basically learned
my geography of Africa by
designing this map!”

What happened:
When Alex joined the staff
four years ago as Managing
Editor, she was saddled with
unenviable tasks like making
us actually turn things in on
time and generally getting our
shit together. Though she was
great at that, she also quickly
displayed an unparalleled
talent for knowing what
among the unending cultural
barrage actually mattered
the most. (She also totally
upped our lunch game.) Since
becoming Editor-In-Chief
she has steered us towards
the meaningful movements
and away from the dubious
ones, had mind adventures
with the likes of Cat Power
and Devendra Banhart,
filled an entire passport on
assignments to countries
including China and Iceland
and written Pulitzer-worthy
drink reviews. As our
representative to the physical
world she has embodied
everything we imagine The
FADER to be—insightful,
hilarious and a little bit
reckless. Though this issue is
her last, it captures the daring
and unexpected direction she
has always pointed us in.

Where else you can see
his work: As Jace Clayton:
Bidoun, The Wire and
Encyclopedia Africana. As
DJ /rupture: Tigerbeat6, Soul
Jazz and his own Dutty
Artz label.

Where else you can see her
work: US News and World
Report, The New York Times
and krisannejohnson.com

Where else can you see his
work: jeremy-begel.com

Where else you can see her
work: Improving the world
as executive director of the
human rights organization
Not On Our Watch and as
curator of the “Get Weird”
series at the New Museum.

Fila Helmsman

24 T H E FA DE R

Hurricane Chris. How do you Fila?

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Q-TIP ON

With A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip revolutionized the way hip-hop sounded, so it’s no surprise that
he’s a fan of The Wire, a show that has changed the way we view society and humanity. We talked
with Tip about the show’s reflections in his own life as well as its overall impact on television.

wasn’t trying to lean one ideology
against the other. It seemed
very conservative. It’s very selfderived motivation, instead of
thinking for the people. I think
when you have that kind of
philosophy going on, people start
resting more on their survival
tactics.

What first drew you to The Wire?
The grittiness, the reality, the edge
of it—it just seemed really true
to life. It takes that edge and that
grittiness and completely captures
it as it is day to day.
Is there a certain character that
you were drawn to?
I like a lot of the characters. I
like Snoop, but I think there is an
edginess that is real about all the
characters and I think they really
bring the show to life well. I think
that the dynamics of the characters
and the dynamics of the storyline
and how there are so many different
subplots and stories within one
single episode is impressive.
Is there any issue that The Wire
has tackled that you feel they
really brought to the general public’s
attention?
I think in season four, how they really
showed how there is a process to street
life and the drug game in terms of how kids
are indoctrinated into it at a young age.
How does that start, do you think?
Part of it comes from feeling that you don’t
have any alternatives. You kind of fall into
what you are around, and I think if you
look at the evolution of the show and the
characters themselves, they rise and fall—
by default some become top dogs when
they were underdogs before. I think that
plays into the reality of the game. These
kids fall into these things not by choice
but by situation.
And you feel this is true to real life?
I grew up in the ’80s, so it was Reagan,
there wasn’t a lot of money, and there
wasn’t a lot of opportunity for black folks.
There was robbery, drug dealing, there
2 6 T HE FA DE R

"I’M SURE FOR THE
AVERAGE PERSON IT
SEEMS UNREAL.
IT’S JUST AMAZING
THAT SOMEBODY
HAD THE GUTS TO BE
ABLE TO WRITE LIKE
THAT AND PUT THAT
OUT THERE."
was a myriad of things. In Baltimore it’s
crazy because usually it’s a reflection on
what is going on socio-politically, and I
think that, judging from how everything is
going, it seems like there definitely wasn’t
a lot of opportunity going on. Teachers
weren’t really inspired to teach kids in
public school. A lot of it seems like it

So you feel The Wire portrays
drug dealing in a real way.
I think it portrays it in the
weirdest most accurate sense. A
lot of people, when they think
about drugs, they think it’s cut
and dry. On the show there’s a
whole web that goes into this
situation of being a dealer and
living that life, and I think The Wire
probably more than any other
show has put that in front of you.
When you think about how many plots
and storylines and twists that are going on
within this variety of characters, you think
it wouldn’t be possible but it is.

®

R E A D

B E T W E E N

T H E

Do you think there’s been anything
like The Wire in terms of the issues
it touches?
Never. The way that it goes in on the
issues, the truth that comes out. It’s very
daunting and I’m sure for the average
person it seems unreal. It’s just amazing
that somebody had the guts to be able
to write like that and put that out there.

NO PROBLEM
Hey,
Thanks a lot for killing TRUE HIP-HOP just a
little more.
Peace
Jeremy

RESPECT THE SPEX!
Hey FADER Folks,
As a long time fan of the magazine, I
was ecstatic when I saw Keri Hilson and
Santogold on the cover of FADER 51. It was so
great to see two talented and sassy women
on the cover. I also love that you featured
photos of Santogold in her glasses. As a
bespectacled young woman, I have to respect
that. I hope to see more ladies on the cover of
the FADER in the future—in the words of your
editor, this is the YEAR OF THE WOMAN!
Jenny

THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT
(IN THE COOKIE AISLE)
Hello FADER,
In issue 51 it said you are looking for cookie bribes
for a Panda Bear hat? I’ll be in Beijing and am
planning on seeing the giant pandas there. If they
have any panda cookies would that work? Please
please please let me get what I want!
Thank you
Sean

TBA
Dear FADER-ites,
You really knocked issue 51 out of the park! I
loved the background color on the Santogold
side. I do have one question though: why haven’t
you ever done a feature on Dan Deacon? I think
he’d be perfect for your magazine.
Thanks!
Tim

FREE LOVE

DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE FADER PLUS AN EXCLUSIVE MIX OF MUSIC
FEATURED IN THE MAGAZINE, ALL FOR FREE! GRAB A COMPUTER AND GO TO:

thefader.com/podcasts

2 8 T H E FA D E R

Fader 52
March 2008
Africa
Editor’s Letter

I
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5
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t’s not without reason that the popular image of Africa is outlined in chaos and
heartbreak: political upheaval, disease, genocide, corruption and what has
seemed like—in the lives of the FADER staff, at least—a continuous march
towards an inexorable decline, buffeted only occasionally by good news.
This is, of course, a thoroughly incomplete portrait of a continent, a people
and the many, many countries and societies that make it up. The last year
has shown all of us who make it a point to digest and seek out some New
Shit, that Africa—in its multitudinous zigs and zags—is not just the most
newsworthy continent in the world right now, but, in many ways, the
most culturally influential. Traditional soukous music has threaded its way
through indie rock, afrobeat now underlines folk, club music owes as much
to kuduro as it does Miami bass. Rarely, however, does anyone acknowledge
Africa’s incredibly relevant and totally fucking awesome exports, so we’ve
taken it upon ourselves to do just that. We’re not proposing a rainbow at
the end of a very dark day—the bleak reality of the carnage on the ground
will dismiss anyone’s fantasies—but this issue is something to be taken in
hand and perhaps remind the world out there that Africa is a dynamic and
complex continent of civilizations and cultures before it is anything else.
Here I have to thank contributing editor Edwin “Stats” Houghton for
his tireless research in putting together this issue—as well as the feature
stories on South African kwaito music and our cover story on soon-to-beyour-favorite band, BLK JKS. We’ve packed the issue front to back with
everything from Ghanaian hiplife to the electrifying Esau Mwamwaya to
Malian throat singing and fashions from Mozambique. It’s a great set of
stories and one we hope you hold onto for a very long time. It is also my
very last issue as the Editor-in-Chief of The FADER. For all the exhaustion of
trying to find something not only new but also, somehow, impossibly, lasting
in this climate of rapid change, I couldn’t be happier or more proud to finish
my tenure with this issue. I am lightheaded for all of the things I have seen
and heard over the last four years. Thank you for bearing with the bullshit
and, most importantly, having the faith to ride for the weird, extraordinary
people and songs that have been in this magazine. It is—if you can believe
it—only going to get better.

Proving that greatness can travel
through generations: Seun Kuti, son
of Fela, photographed December
2007, atop his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kalakuta
Compound in Lagos, Nigeria.
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW DOSUNMU

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• Katinga MC must drink
Drano to have a voice that
deep. And thank God for
canalangola.net for linking
me to his video because
winter is better with
throaty raps and African
club. Though over time I’ve
gotten better at research,
I’ve never been married
to ancient facts and
Dewey decimal systems.
Canalangola breaks it
down much simpler, with
infinite links to Angolan
music videos categorized
by genre. From tinkly zouk
froufrou to acid house-y
kuduro, it’s the free African
version of the Box on the
internet. MATTHEW SCHNIPPER

• Twice a year Byron Kalet
recruits a trio of bands to
record for his Journal of
Popular Noise. Big deal, I
do that in my basement.
But Kalet puts a spin of his
own on the recordings.
“It was all about finding
the pop song structure
that served the same
purpose as different parts
of a magazine,” he says.
Translated, that means
a magazine’s template is
simulated sonically, from
table of contents to the
stockist list. What results
is a musical journal with
finely fashioned pages
that unfold origami-like
to reveal three 45s tucked
within a letter pressed
poster.
ERIN HANSEN

1SPVE4QPLOETVPI’SS F A D E R F O R T
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®

OF THE

08
, MARCH 20

popularnoise.net

• Karen Kilimnik is a
middle-aged Pennsylvania
woman who seems fairly
content to do whatever
she feels. Here are some
things she has done:
drawn a leather jacket
and fancy hair on a blurry
photograph of herself and
called it a self portrait as
Chrissie Hynde, painted
snow and ice onto a brick
townhouse with Wite-Out,
built a large hut inside a
gallery for her paintings,
painted a big blue circle,
painted the Pink Panther,
painted the forest, painted
the night. The Museum
of Contemporary Art in
Chicago has collected her
artistic whims into her first
major retrospective, on
view through June. Add it
to your list.
MATTHEW SCHNIPPER

Translated, the
•Dundunba
means “dance
of the strongmen,” and it
happens to be the name of
a dance from Guinea. From
a frontal stance, the first
step is to leap forward
and diagonally to the left,
while throwing the right

3 6 T H E FA D E R

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arm as violently as possible
on the same plane in the
opposite direction over the
head. Next, reverse the step
while moving along the
perimeter of a circle. For
as many hours as possible.
The skill and success of
the dancer is measured by

how fully one is able to let
one’s body turn to putty
and flail one’s limbs as if
without bones.
The Kuku is a dance
traditionally performed
by women of Guinea
while their husbands are
out fishing or harvesting

rice. The movements
of the dance mirror the
movements of the field.
Move one foot diagonally
forward while bending
down from the waist and
waving the hands under
the knees. Repeat this
progression in all four lateral

directions and then twist the
arms in a circular motion
while slowly rising to a
standing position. Raffia
pom-poms, if available, are
often used to accentuate
these movements.
SIMON GREENBERG

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WRITING HOME DINAW MENGESTU AND THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS

PHOTOGRAPHY JULIEN CHATELIN

• Washington, DC is a

square town. To most, it’s
only the city where the
President lives and where
laws are made. To those
who reside there though,
they know that a vital part
of the city is Little Ethiopia.
Until he was three years
old, Dinaw Mengestu lived
in real Ethiopia, then he
moved to the Midwest for

3 8 T HE FA D E R

the bulk of his growing up
years, and later went on to
DC to attend Georgetown.
Not far from the apartment
he lived in at 17th and U
is Logan Circle, where
Sepha, the protagonist
of Mengestu’s first novel,
The Beautiful Things That
Heaven Bears, lives and
works. Sepha too is an
Ethiopian immigrant living
in Washington, but unlike
Mengestu he has lived in
both places many years.
DC’s “power and poverty”
are now just as routine in his
life as Ethiopia’s, which he
left to avoid genocide. For
Sepha, a lengthy subway

ride to the suburbs becomes
a metaphor for loneliness
and immigration: “There’s
a solitude and isolation that
come with knowing that out
of everyone you had begun
your journey with, only you
and the few faces across
the aisle are left. That alone
seems enough to make a
connection, but as it stands,
the opposite is always
true. The empty space,
whether it’s only a few feet
or the entire car, becomes
impassable.” This blankness
shapes both Sepha and the
book, a world of weathered
routine gnashing with
unmeshable foreignness.

“I wanted Sepha’s voice
to have a strong, quiet
undercurrent of melancholy
without becoming overly
dramatic,” Mengestu
says from France, where
he is temporarily living
as he begins work on his
second novel. “He lives
with the emptiness and
loneliness of exile every day,
and for me that sense of
dislocation and loss could
only be best expressed
through a voice that was
restrained, almost muted.”
Early in the novel, Sepha
accompanies a friend on
a drive, and apropos of
essentially nothing, he says

he will bear the friend’s
poor driving skills as “we
had all suffered enough
mockery and humiliation
to last us well beyond our
lifetimes.” Beautiful Things
is ultimately carried by that
dry panic and inherent
calm, large stories told
through little movements.
MATTHEW SCHNIPPER

riverheadbooks.com

METAL MACHINE MUSIC THE HOMEMADE MOTOR OF CONGOTRONICS

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Sometime in 2006
•a group
of Congolese
musicians who for 40
years have been making
traditional Bazombo trance
music on a soundsystem
made of megaphones and
car batteries suddenly
became darlings in the

4 0 T HE FA D E R

(admittedly tiny) universe
that is the alternative
festival circuit. Most fools
who’ve experienced the
likembe and feedback
cocktail that is Konono
No 1 have some idea of
their back story and the
role homemade tech

played in the evolution of
the style they call tradimoderne. But Konono is
only the most famous of
a flourishing subculture
of tradi-moderne bands
playing (and sometimes
combining) different
ethnic music on outdoor

amplified sets to compete
with the traffic and
urban noise of suburban
Kinshasa. We dipped into
the extensive visual archive
of Belgium’s Crammed
records (where congotronic
bands like Kasai Allstars
and Sobanza Mimanisa—

literally “orchestra of
light”—share the roster with
Detroit techno heavy Kevin
Saunderson) for some
glimpses into the scene.
EDWIN “STATS” HOUGHTON

crammed.be

NWS
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• While some pockets
of humanity might still
exist where the simple
wonders of Forrest Gump
or the tragic romance of
Titanic are still a mystery,
audiences throughout East
Africa are experiencing
the magic of American
moviemaking in record
numbers, thanks to the
rise of the local video
veejay. Part interpreter,
part commentator, part
shaman, the video veejay
not only tells audiences—
via a live running audio
commentary—what the
characters are saying, he
or she also breaks down
the complicated morality
tales hidden within most
Hollywood blockbusters.
In Uganda popular dubs of
western films routinely get
traded like fresh mixtapes.
T COLE RACHEL

4 2 T HE FA DE R

• Accra’s dozen local radio stations all play slight variations
of the same format: gospel in the morning, hiplife all day
and night, and highlife randomly thrown in for good
measure. The best way to listen is to buy a little radio by the
side of the road, dial until something comes through and
don’t turn it off until you get on the plane home. Fortunately
for the world outside of Ghana, this experience is no longer
site-specific because of the newly launched Kwadu.com, an
internet radio station streaming channels of hiplife, highlife,
gospel and a few other Western genres 24-7. And in case
you’re wondering, kwadu means banana.
PETER MACIA

• Anthropologically
minded record collectors
will thank Drag City
Records for bringing to
light some of Mali’s most
hard-to-find music. Their
Yaala Yaala imprint is the
curatorial vision of Jack
Carneal, a collector of
bootleg cassettes and field
recordings from rural Mali.
There are currently only
three Yaala Yaala releases
available; Carneal and
co are struggling with
complicated Malian music
laws and West African
cassette pirates to bring
even more music to the
masses. “I don’t weigh
our label with any great
cultural responsibility or
import,” says Carneal. “We
do this for the simplest of
reasons: we think this is
good music.” T COLE RACHEL

• Of all the legendary
studios dotting Kingston’s
historical landscape,
Randy’s Studio 17 still
remains one of the lesserknown production houses
in reggae history. Everyone
worked there—Marley,
Scratch and Bunny Lee
among them—and now
the selectors over at VP
Records have started 17
North Parade, a reissue
imprint dedicated to the
studio’s diverse output.
Spanning the classic dub
of Joe Gibbs to the early
dancehall of Penthouse
Records, the discs also
come complete with bonus
reissue extras. Old time DJ
come back again! SAM DUKE

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND MELINA TAKES IT TO THE BETA MAX

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•

In the video for Ludacris’
“Shake Your Money
Maker,” Pharrell sings
the chorus laying on a
floor covered in cash.
It was director Melina’s
breakthrough video,
and in her subsequent
work—whether it was

4 4 T HE FA DE R

www.anarchyeyewear.com

for a solid gold Beyoncé
or a platinum Jennifer
Lopez—the message was
the same, and it looked
expensive. Then came
Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual
Seduction,” Melina’s clip
that not only recalled the
soul of early ’80s video,

but its low definition looks
as well. Made in tribute
to Shalamar, Zapp and
Prince’s “When Doves Cry,”
it’s Snoop’s best period
piece since “It’s a Doggy
Dogg World.” “He wanted
to go further and wear jheri
curls,” says Melina of the

star’s enthusiasm for the
concept. The camcorder
quality of “Sensual
Seduction” not only makes
for effective YouTubery, but
it is also a more accurate
reflection on the current
state of the music industry
than Beyoncé in the

backseat of a Rolls Royce.
As Melina admits, “It’s the
cheapest video I’ve ever
done that I didn’t have to
pay for out of my pocket.”
ERIC DUCKER

rsafilms.com

1-800-426-6396

UNHEARD OF SUBLIME FREQUENCIES OPENS A WORLD OF MUSIC

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Last year, Sublime
•Frequencies,
a label run by
ex-Sun City Girls member
Alan Bishop and filmmaker
Hisham Mayet, released
an LP by Baamar Salmou,
a guitarist from Western
Sahara, who with his wife
and son, records under the
name Group Doueh. The
record is familiar, strange,
funky and brash, like many
of the nearly 40 recordings
and five DVDs on the label.
Could you speak about
the Group Doueh project
and how it came about?
Hisham Mayet: The Group
Doueh project was first
realized when Alan and I
were on an expedition in
Morocco and Algeria in
the summer of 2005. Alan
was trolling for radio in
Essaouria and came across
this searing guitar tone
that was unlike anything
else we had ever heard
before. We took that tape
all around and asked
anyone who might have
known who this might be.
I decided to go back to
the Western Sahara and
look for more of this music.

Baamar Salmou of Group Doueh.

I started in Casablanca
and worked my way south.
I finally arrived at the last
outpost in the southern
most fringes of the Western
Sahara. No one could
help. One last attempt
was to start asking the
shopkeepers and one told
me of this studio. Upon my
arrival, a man with a baby
blue tracksuit answered. I
told him what I was looking
for and he invited me in.
He pulled out his boombox
and played the tape.
After about 10 seconds,
he looked at me with the
most ecstatic grin and
says, “That’s me!” Suffice to
say, it was one of the most
glorious moments of my
life. So I was able to spend
the next week with Baamar
Salmou and comb through
his cassette archive. I

was the first person to
be granted permission to
release his music.
Is that how these recording
situations usually take
place, hunting someone
down on a hunch?
HM: Those situations seem
to transpire by sheer will
and destiny. On any of
these trips, recording these
performances is my main
focus. It has a lot to do
with charm, trust between
myself and my subjects,
and a determination in
believing in what you are
doing in some of these
remote locations.
How do you feel about
terms like “world music”
and “African music”?
Alan Bishop: They dull and
oversimplify. Categories

and definitions are the
cages everyone seems
to buy into. I’m not sure
anyone can change the
way large corporations,
media and academics
have been defining music,
art and culture, but we do
what we can to avoid it
ourselves.
How does Sublime
Frequencies work?
AB: I refuse to hire
employees and turn it into
a “business first” situation.
We function like a family
or group of friends with
similar interests. We love
what we do and it will stay
that way.
How do you see the
label fitting in with past
“world music” labels like
Smithsonian Folkways

“A man with a baby blue tracksuit pulled out his boombox
and played the tape. After about 10 seconds, he looks at me with
the most ecstatic grin and says, ‘That’s me!’”

4 6 T H E FA D E R

or Nonesuch Explorer?
AB: Judging from the
conversations I have
had with the many who
listen to our releases, very
few [outsiders] had ever
heard anything quite like
Group Doueh or many
other Sublime Frequencies
artists—until we released
those records. Original
recordings by artists,
whether they were pop,
rock, folk or whatever,
from many places in the
developing world between
the years 1960-1980 have
been completely ignored
in the West. Investigating
this music from Africa, the
Middle East and Asia for
the past 25 years, I have
discovered for myself
that there are unlimited
amounts of amazing
musical documents in all
styles from these areas. At
least a minimal amount of
international recognition
and respect for the
previously “unheard by the
West” world of sound has
resulted from the Sublime
Frequencies releases.
RAFAEL COHEN

sublimefrequencies.com

WHAT’S GOIN ON BERKELEY HENDRICKS AND THE BIRTH OF THE COOL

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a certain amount
•of While
fancypants art
historical analysis will
explain painter Barkley
Hendricks’ lauded place
in African American
Art History (graduate of
Yale Fine Arts—BA and
graduate degrees, group

4 8 T HE FA DE R

show at the Whitney
when he was 26, major
solo show at the Studio
Museum by the age of 35,
etc) the thing that really
speaks to us armchair
aesthetes is Hendricks’
series of bold portraits
from the mid-late ’70s,

a grip of which will be
on exhibition beginning
this February. I’m not just
talking about the nude
self-portrait (with Kangol
and tube socks!) of a black,
male artist painted in an
era when Andy Warhol
was poncing around with

Liz Taylor lithos and a
Brillo box of cocaine, but
the sassy, downtown-asfuck portraits of Hendricks’
fellow movers, shakers,
neighbors and lovers. This
is the black bohemia of
the ’70s that birthed the
self-determination of the

Panthers and the swagger
of Marvin Gaye.
ALEX WAGNER

nasher.duke.edu

ROBOT ROCK SILVER APPLES RETURN FROM THE STRATOSPHERE

NWS
PRNT

“We found out later that because of our little prank some fairly high executives lost their jobs.”
psych-electronic duo
Silver Apples showed up
for a gig at Manhattan’s
Max’s Kansas City,
frontman Simeon Coxe
and drummer Dan
Taylor found themselves
greeted by New York
City Marshals. Pan Am

5 0 T HE FA DE R

Airlines, who sent the
marshals to seize their
equipment, was suing
the Apples and their label
over the cover image
on their second album,
Contact, released the
same year. Though Pan
Am allowed the Apples
to shoot in the cockpit
of an actual passenger
jet in return for the free
publicity, they were
furious when the record
was released showing
that the band had snuck
joints into the cockpit and
placed a photograph of
plane wreckage on the
reverse cover. “We found
out later that because of
our little prank some fairly
high executives lost their

jobs,” says Coxe almost
40 years later. “[After the
Max’s incident] we literally
went into hiding. Outlaws,
like Frank and Jesse James.
We hid our equipment in
an artist friend’s loft and
lived in a dive hotel under
assumed names until
the smoke cleared. No
band can survive that.” In
the aftermath, the label
folded and, without a
home, the Apples split.
What did survive the
incident was their music—
woozy, apocalyptic protoelectro drone tunes that
would influence bands
from Suicide to Spacemen
3. After witnessing the
underground electronic
explosion of the past

two decades, Silver
Apples reformed in 1997,
recording and performing
sporadically until 2005,
when Taylor passed
away. Coxe resurrected
the name two years later
and released the new “I
Don’t Know” 7-inch this
past June. “I am addicted
to creating new stuff,” he
says. “When Danny died,
I went into the reels of
tapes of him practicing in
our studio, both from the
‘60s and from sessions in
the late ‘90s, and spent
about a year sampling his
sounds and patterns. I put
together our songs with
his sampled drums so I
could play on top of them
just like we used to do.”

He chalks up their initial
split to the confined
thinking of the times.
“Today, acceptance, even
if only out of curiosity, is
much more widespread,”
he says, “And that makes
it more fun to do what
I do.”
SAM DUKE
silverapples.com

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HAVE IT YOUR WAY®

•

Sure, I own a t-shirt
with emblazoned with
Gilbert Arenas’ face,
but my new favorite
wizard is a spiritual
electronic music guru
from Houston, Texas. His
name is JD Emmanuel,
and his superlative

self-(re)-released 1982
album Wizards still
bristles with ancient
intensity and futuristic
wonder. Influenced by
Emmanuel’s “extensive
background in spiritual
and metaphysical studies”
and a love for Reich, Riley

and Glass, these blissful
analog synth jams should
instantly appeal to fans
of Eno, Cluster and the
music from “Legend of
Zelda.” And there’s plenty
more electric relaxation
available on Emmanuel’s
website. Go for the

• Inspired by a
concentrated splurge of
jetsetting—part work, part
play—Matina Sukhahuta’s
latest collection of jewelry
immortalizes her favorite
landmarks in glittering
shades of silver and gold.
Want a chunk of Bondi
Beach for on your ring
finger? The Chrysler
Building for your index?
Or maybe just a good
old-fashioned English pub
for your thumb? “I like the
idea of taking something
ordinary and making it
extraordinary,” says the
Thai designer of her line
Matina Amanita. Thanks
to Sukhahuta, the eighth
wonder of the modern
world is at your very
CHIOMA NNADI
fingertips.
matinaamanita.com

5 4 T H E FA D E R

• And-i kicked off in 2006 with gawky knitted trousers and
a shirt with a mitten-shaped pocket on its back for friendly
hugs (and warm pinkies). Two years down the line, the British
menswear brand is still dedicated to bespoke detailing, ie, if
you’re in a no logo mood, you can unbutton and remove the
inside label. But what’s really neat for spring ’08 is and-i’s first
stab at shoes—a skinny lace up and a hole-punched brogue.
Both simple styles have ultra low heels and come in mellow
colors like burgundy, leaf green and pastel grey. Best worn
scuffed.
HELEN JENNINGS

• Inspired by urban
environments and the
peculiarities of “redneck
style,” Bérangère Claire
designed her first collection
of button-downs while on
vacation in New York. “New
York style is so extreme in
comparison to Paris,” says
Claire. “Sometimes it’s
hard to tell the difference
between hipsters and
actual rednecks.” Seeing
the plaid shirt as “a sort of
uniform that goes through
the generations,” she
highlights simplicity but
maintains her singular
vision with refreshingly
unexpected color ways,
snug fitting cuts (for
boys and girls) and her
trademark deer insignia.
“Everyone owns a shirt,”
says the French designer, “I
just wanted to make mine,
the way I like it.” KAT POPIEL
berangereclaire.com

and-i.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS (AND-I, MATINA AMANITA).

• A dayglo print of metalite
King Diamond sporting
Tibetan death masks is
exactly the kind of ironically
dark world that designer
TJ Cowgill likes to conjure
for his new line of tees,
Actual Pain. With a cut
and sew collaboration
for Vanguard under
his belt and upcoming
pieces with Mexico Citybased designers Santa
Muerte and NYC-based
Mishka, Cowgill’s offkilter style is in demand,
adding a refreshing—and
deathly—flair to the often
monotonous terrain of
streetwear. “I am metal,
so Actual Pain is metal,”
Cowgill says. Shoes and
jackets will be added to his
repertoire for fall ’08, a first
in metal sophistication.

EYE TO EYE KSUBI TAKES RICHARD NICOLL BACK TO THE FUTURE

STYLE

• Richard Nicoll (Central

Saint Martins alum,
London Fashion Week hot
ticket) has teamed up with
Ksubi (cheeky tattooed
scamps, cult Aussie brand,
purveyors of denim with
attitude) for a new range

5 6 T HE FA DE R

of sunnies. The small but
perfectly constructed
eyewear collection
consists of three styles:
the aggressively scientific
Jacob, the super serious
Justin and the ever so
slightly scary Jason. Each

pair draws its sparse color
palette from Nicoll’s spring/
summer ’08 womenswear
line (white, silver, grey
and crystal clear) and
is as uncompromisingly
crisp as the designer’s
tailoring. “We’re all

interested in pop culture
and personal expression
over status fashion, so the
decision to collaborate
with Richard was a nobrainer,” says Ksubi cofounder George Gorrow.
“The sunglasses are

inspired by idiosyncratic
1940s futurism with a nod
to social misfits.” Max
Headroom, get ready.
HELEN JENNINGS

ksubi.com

STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU.

PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW DOSUNMU

GARMS FOR SALE JME ALREADY KNOWS

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG

• From hip-hop festivals

What you think I make
T-shirts for these stupid
ratty girls with no arse.
Bit harsh isn’t it?
In real life I don’t cuss
them, but Skepta does all
the time. At first girls wore
them thinking they were
supporting us. By now
they should know they’re
bootlegs.

in the Czech Republic
to market stalls in rural
England, T-shirts baring
the slogan Boy Better Know
have been popping up on
all corners—with a slew of
unofficial bootlegs. Brothers
JME and Skepta are the
MCs behind the movement,
one that originally started
as a one-off promo stunt in
a grime club on the island
of Cyprus. From their East
London HQ, BBK poster boy
JME waxes lyrical about the
sartorial viral.
When did the whole Boy
Better Know thing kick off?
Summer 2006. We went to
Ayia Napa with 200 shirts to
give away for free to ravers,
girls, artists to create a party
vibe. No one in grime gives
anything away for free,
we’re all too broke, but it was
the best thing we ever did.
How did it evolve into a
business?
When we saw the response
in Napa, we came home
and started selling them
for tenners on eBay. Then
we upped the quality with
I Wear My Own Garms
embroidered badges and
better quality fabric—so now

JME stops off in Chinatown, NYC

they retail at 25. I processed
the first 600 sales myself.
The postman had to leave
bundles of recorded delivery
stickers so I didn’t hold up
the post office queue.
Where did the phrase “Boy
Better Know” come from?
It’s a lyric from back in
the day. None of us can
remember who said it first.
I’d say, Boy Better Know,
CEO and Everybody Knows,
Boy Better Know. The first
track I put it in was “Awor”
in summer 2006, and then
I used it as the title for the
mixtape series.
Is Boy Better Know a crew?
It’s not a crew ’cos no one’s
in it. It’s more an enterprise
’cos it’s our label, mixtapes
and tees. Everyone that’s
down with what we do reps
for Boy Better Know—Wiley,

Skepta, Tinchy Strider,
Maximum, Frisko—but
they represent rather than
belong.
How many Boy Better
Know tees have you sold?
Ten thousand all over the
world through MySpace. If
you include the bootlegs it
would be 30,000.
Tell us about the
bootleggers.
The only official design is
Boy Better Know, everything
else—Girl Better Know, Girl
Better Blow, Girl Better
Show—is a bootleg. When
I first clocked mans selling
the tees on eBay I was
angry but then thought,
OK, they’re just hustling
like me. Then it got out of
control with people using
my image and saying they
had exclusive deals. A girl

modeling a Girl Better Blow
hoody on MySpace put
me in touch with the main
people. I considered working
with them but they got rude
so I thought, Let them make
their money with the bait
versions and I’ll beat them
by staying two steps ahead.
It’s getting as bad as a few
years back when you could
buy bootleg versions of Wale
Adeyemi’s tag beanies and
denims at every market in
England. It’s crazy though,
’cos we’ve come from grime,
whereas [Adeyemi] had
David Beckham wearing his
gear before the bootlegging
took off.
On your “Expensive
Freestyle” on MySpace
you cuss girls wearing
Girl Better Blow T-shirts
by saying, Girl better
know ain’t in my class/

“No one in grime gives anything away for free,
we’re all too broke, but it was the best thing we ever did.”
5 8 T H E FA D E R

Why have the shirts
caught on?
I designed them based
on what I’d like to wear.
I guess also it’s because
they’re really British,
especially now that we’ve
added the I Wear My
Own Garms badges. Most
streetwear is very hip-hop
influenced. These are fresh
’cos they represent grime.
Are we going to see any
more catch phrases
immortalized on chests?
Maybe, but I wouldn’t
do Shut Yuh Mut ’cos I
won’t promote anything
aggressive. The thing with
Boy Better Know is you
can wear it to a club, for a
date. If my mum couldn’t
wear it, I wouldn’t make it.
SARAH BENTLEY

myspace.com/jmeserious

THE CRAFT KLOSET IS THE NEW WARDROBE

STYLE

a stuffy school uniform to
set Mallika Ruangkritya’s
primal fashion instincts
in motion. “Hairclips and
headbands were the only
way to modify my look,”
says the designer. Growing

6 0 T HE FA D E R

up between Thailand and
Europe, Ruangkritya carried
a love of all things crafty
with her, and on returning
to Bangkok, started the
line Kloset. “Most Thai
brands are either extremely
traditional or western,” she

says. Pleated bolero jackets,
custom floral prints and
shirt dresses with gauzy
paneling are all pieces in the
current collection that mesh
the look of traditional Thai
handcrafting with more
contemporary techniques.

Now six years and two
boutiques deep, she’s
ironed out some of the early
cutesy tendencies (“Looking
back, the line was maybe
too sweet,” she admits),
confidently toeing the line
between whimsical and

worldly for her US debut. “It
used to be the girl-next-door,
playing with dolls,” she says.
“She’s still cute now, just a
little more adventurous.”
CHIOMA NNADI

klosetdesign.com

Styles: RB2140/RB3342

• It took little more than

STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU.

PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW DOSUNMU

STYLE
• Japanese textile and
clothing line minä
perhonen make delicately
constructed textiles of
day-to-day images (cats,
clouds, licorice). Custom
fabrics with names like
Neighborhood, Flowerbed
and Fogland reveal a
storyboard of fantasy
landscapes mapped out
with everything from
colorful marker pens to
hand-embroidered yarn.
“There’s lots of contrast
between the colors,
textures and patterns
we use,” says Yuko Mori
of Mina Perhonen. “But
when you look at the entire
collection—the composition
as a whole—all the pieces
connect together quite
perfectly.”
ERIN HANSEN

•Like two newborn kitties
frolicking in a flowery field,
this spring collaboration
between two spankingly
new brands is good vibes
and promising futures all
around. The two brands,
Public School (they of
tailored street sensibility)
and Rkives (Sean Ziran’s
newly minted bag atelier),
met at the drawing board
to create a two-item
collabo with the stated
undertone of “perfection
in imperfection,” say PS’s
Maxwell Osborne and
Dao-Yi Chow. “Both bags
were designed with big
city attitude in their blood.”
Produced in a limited
quantity of 15 totes and 15
duffles, this spring will be a
season to remember for two
on the cusp.
NAT THOMSON

mina-perhonen.jp

Available at Fred Segal, LA.

6 2 T HE FA DE R

RANJANI GOPALARATHINAM

golausa.com

Style: RB3359

kangol.com

• Hotshot UK designer Jonathan Saunders has taken a
swipe—in blood red, sunshine yellow and mocha—across his
eponymous new line of hybrid women’s shoes by Gola. A
brand that’s better known to those who recognize “soccer”
as “football,” the Gola/Saunders collabo comes through with
cool, preppie, ultra-British shapes (oxfords, flats, spectators)
that mix suede, canvas and patent leather. Perfect for those
of us who fancy a walk in the park, but start on the subway.

PHOTGRAPHY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS (KANGOL, PUBLIC SCHOOL).

• Soaring temperatures,
droughts, massive coastal
flooding—it’s fair to say
global warming is not
much fun or remotely
fashion-friendly. The
more practical-minded
among you will note that
as the Earth burns, good
headwear will become
very necessary, and, being
stylish sorts, you’ll want
to create your own shade
without looking too shady.
Step forward Kangol with
a range of lightweight,
multicoloured sun hats.
Climate control features
include an extra long peak
to shield your face and a
roll-up/down Lawrence
of Arabia cloth to protect
your neck.
SCOTT WRIGHT

SQUARE BY DESIGN IOANNIS DIMITROUSIS GIVES FASHION A SHAPE UP

STYLE

Dimitrousis harbors a
secret obsession with
geometry. “Squares,
triangles, pentangles—out
of geometric shapes I
can make my clothing,”
he says. “And it’s not just

6 4 T HE FA DE R

the prints, it’s in the very
silhouette of each design.”
The fascination manifests
itself in his entire spring ’08
collection, from the tiniest
crocheted square in a silk
dress to the hexagonal
shoulder pads on a men’s

jacket—a piece that happens
to be structurally akin to
Mongolian armor. The
Central Saint Martins
graduate happily indulged
himself in the mathematical
delights of art deco for his
fourth collection (trompe

l’oeil tiling!), as well as
Chinese architecture.
Lest the cold rationality
of mathematics play too
much into the design,
Dimitrousis has his mother
hand-crochet almost half
of the collection using

locally sourced Greek
silk yarn, ensuring that a
labor of love is embedded
into the very fabric of his
designs.
CHIOMA NNADI
ioannisdimitrousis.com

Style: RB4101

• Greek designer Ioannis

STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU.

PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW DOSUNMU

DIVINE INTERVENTION WORSHIP WORTHY SPREADS THE GOOD WORD

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG

• For the past year or so,

the women of Worship
Worthy have been
clearing out a corner of the
streetwear blogosphere,
creating a site that is
entirely by-the-ladies-forthe-ladies. Operating under
the pseudonyms Saint
Agnes, Mary Madaglene
and Santa Maria, the
trinity is comprised of
two fashion designers
( Jennifer Wannarachue and
Gabriela Lardizabal) and
marketing exec Grace Santa
Maria. Between them they
transmit pearls of sartorial
wisdom over the internet—
as well as art tidbits and
event news—via what’s
commonly known as “Our
Daily Bread.” Down at their
offices, Saint Agnes and
Mary Madaglene gave the
good word.
Why did you decide to
adopt fake names?
St A: We wanted to be
anonymous mostly
because of what we call
the “Hail Mary” list, a list
that spotlights female
trendsetters in New York.
It’s essentially more
about giving props than
anything else, but you
never know how people

The women of Worship Worthy at their space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

are going to react. Then
maybe six months in, we
realized that in order to
grow the business we
needed to use our allies.
Lots of our friends didn’t
know it was us.
What was the reaction?
St A: Most people were
really flattered. Before girls
were writing in thanking
us and asking, “Who are
you, mysterious women?”
But now that we’ve
revealed our identity I feel
it has become a little more
political.
MM: It really isn’t a
popularity contest. It isn’t
about who you know,
where you’ve been hanging
out, or what outfit you’ve
been wearing. It’s about
your contributions to your
industry or your artistic
expression.

What does a girl have to
do to be worship worthy?
St A: We spotlight women
that are pioneers in their
field or doing jobs we
admire. It’s inspiration for
younger girls that come
on the website and say,
“Wow, these girls are really
doing things, that’s what I
wanna do.”
MM: And that it’s also
about showing that
it’s possible to have a
successful life doing nontraditional things.
St A: Part of the reason that
we started this is because
there are so many blogs
for guys, and it’s just guys
jocking other guys. New
York is such a competitive
place that many women
try to keep what they are
doing to themselves. So
it’s important for me to put
positive vibes out there

for other women, like,
look, we can do this and
not be catty. Just trying to
change the way women
work together or don’t
work together in New York
City. Before Worship there
wasn’t really a platform
to talk about what was
going on with cool chicks.
We have male readers
out there too. We don’t
have the same content as
Hypebeast, but we are the
female version of them as
far as what’s going on with
new art openings, book
signings, brands.

worshipworthy.com

How has the scene
changed since you moved
to New York?
St A: We grew up in the
decade right before blogs,
before young people’s
lives revolved around
fast fashion, global

“Who are you, mysterious women?”
6 6 T H E FA D E R

communication and news
sharing. Things were
slower, a brew took a
little longer to stew. So it’s
actually been a challenge
for us to do Worship
Worthy. Five years ago, we
were the cool kids going
out every single night.
Priorities change, and now
we have to make more
of an effort to stay in the
loop, even though it may
not be as important to us.
That’s actually Worship
Worthy in a nutshell, we
want it to have a different
voice, a more experienced
voice. An old school way of
thinking in comparison to
what is going on today.
MM: These days, if you
want it, you can get it really
fast.
St A: Back then it was a lot
more fun finding out about
parties through friends that
you met, through people
you worked with. It was
more word of mouth—there
were no e-blasts.
MM: And pray to God you
knew someone in PR that
would tell you where all the
industry parties were. That
was insider information—
now anybody can go to a
party.
CHIOMA NNADI

lanyards to evoke the
hyper, right-now energy
that dominated ’90s club
culture. “I was a raver,” he
admits. Nowadays, he’s
making further inroads
by casting his own forms
instead of recombining

found objects. Espousing
an early ’80s love affair
with artists like Basquiat,
Keith Haring and Bernard
Wilhelm, we know the
blueprints for a new
wave of radical objects
to party in are currently

percolating in Habana’s
mind.
RANJANI GOPALARATHINAM

chrishabana.com

STYLING CHIOMA NNADI. MODEL RYAN SCAILS. RYAN WEARS JEANS BY H&M.

PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG

“WE’RE VERY
PROUD TO
COME ‘FROM
THE OUTSIDE.’”

GENF
NEW WEIRD
AFRICA
THE MYSTICAL
YIP OF TARTIT

Tartit at a youth hostle in
Liège, Belgium.

W

hat I mostly remember of Tartit is their
pastel kaftans. I saw them five years
ago on the National Mall in DC, and while
apparently the men in the group danced with
swords, I don’t remember that. Instead I recall
the trilling of five seated women with swaying
torsos. This is no slight to the non-choral/nonfemale members of the group, but simply
a testament to the weird incanting power of
Tartit’s mystical yip.
“Our music is really traditional,” says Tartit
leader Fadimata Walett Ourmar through a
translator. Though he is speaking of Malian
Tuareg musical traditions, it is still difficult to
believe that their rhythms could be anything
but universally odd. From their 2006 album
Abacabok, “Houmessia” is the song that
congeals best, replete with an electric guitar
solo. The bitter twang of North African blues is
immediately identifiable as Malian and evokes
their acclaimed peers Tinariwen, for whom
Ourmar has a “special fondness,” though Tartit
could never be anything but Tinariwen’s bizarre
foil. Thirty seconds into “Eha Ehenia” from
Abacabok someone coughs, then continues to
do so (muffled) throughout the song’s next four
minutes. It’s peculiar, both that it happened,
and that they decided to include it on the
record. Tartit has a cadenced found-soundness
that is more in tune with an avant garde
underground than All Things Considered-style
world music. But, says Ourmar, “Every music is
world music!”
Though some of Tartit’s members are not
professional musicians, about half of the group
is. Their origins are fuzzy in prior press, some
saying that they met in refugee camps, but
Ourmar corrects this. “We knew each other
before,” he says. “We met a Belgian woman who
asked us if there was a group of Tuareg women
playing music. We said, ‘No, but let’s give it a
try.’” This combination of Making the Band and
desert music evolved into a diverse merging
of Malian styles. “We’re very proud to come
‘from the outside’ and be the ambassadors of
our culture,” says Ourmar. And while in some
ways they are clearly ambassadors—releasing
music on the Belgian label Crammed that may
not otherwise be heard outside of Mali—Tartit
truly exists in a culture of nebulousness. There
is no definitiveness to relay. “You know, for us
Tuaregs, the future is in the hands of God,”
Ourmar says, and without any other Earthly
guide, that loose spirituality will continue in
their music.
MATTHEW SCHNIPPER
myspace.com/tartit

PHOTOGRAPHY JEAN-MICHEL CLAJOT

70 T HE FA DE R

T H E FADER 7 1

“TO MAKE
MUSIC THAT IS
BASS-DRIVEN
IS HEAVEN TO
ME.”

GENF
GET PHYSICAL
T2 AND
BASSLINE
PUNCH IN

T

2 came up in Leeds—a high crime kinda
town where schools send bad seeds to
boxing class to work out their anger issues
before they become institutional drains, or
worse. So before he became the go-to guy
for the ass-damaging, post-grime UK dance
music called bassline house, T2 was a teen
welterweight with a nasty left hook. “I boxed
from when I was about 14 ’til about 17. It was
not to be my career—I love music too much—
but I pack a punch,” says the now 19-year-old.
Though T2 is no knuckle-dragging alpha dude,
he credits his boxing days for giving him the
focus to become the producer/DJ he is today.
“Boxing brings you a peace of mind,” he says.
“Getting stronger made me start thinking
properly and gave me great mental stamina.”
Bassline’s low-end pulse has vibrated
off North England’s walls for seven or so
years—reverberating in Sheffield’s Niche Club
around the time that a 12-year-old T2 started
making music. It was a sound birthed in, and
confined to, places like Sheffield and Leeds
where, lacking London’s network of pirate
radio channels, the music is more commonly
circulated the old fashioned way via DJs and
in clubs. And since Londoners commonly
view North England as the problem stepchild
they don’t discuss, bassline’s heavy, garage-y
chunes never really broke out of the region’s
club circuit. That is, until T2 came with what
he describes as “the missing link”—the essential
dance banger “Heartbroken,” a twittering

firestarter whose tragic, babylike soul vox
and zigzaggy hunk of sub-bass appease
both the emotional heart and the bouncing
badonkadonk (a trick harder than it sounds).
Recruiting Jodie Aysha, an angel-voiced old
friend, to sing the hook over his oscillating,
hip-hop/garage-informed punch and pulse,
the single updates the soulful 2-step formula
of the early-oughties with R&B vocals over a
distinctly dirty, 4/4 whomp.
Coming off the surprise British chart success
and interminability of “Heartbroken,” T2 signed
to dance imprint Powerhouse/NV, where he’s
developing the R&B duo Addictive and working
on more layered, wobbly tracks, like “My Baby’s
Song” and the Tamzin-featuring “Wot Can
I Do.” T2 hinges all his work on hummable
melody, but it’s the boom that defines his beats.
“Bass has always been an obsession. Since I
was a kid I loved it, so to actually get to make
music that is bass-driven is heaven to me,”
he says. “I’ve always craved it. It’s what gets
me up in the morning.”
Well, that and a stringent workout regime,
which explains why he’s pumping iron in the
“Heartbroken” video. “Wake up, eat, go to the
gym, eat again, go home, go to the studio, eat
again. That’s my routine,” he says. “When you
do music, what can you do, really, besides keep
to yourself, stay out of trouble and do it?”

here are a lot of cutesy press releaseish factoids about Thao Nguyen: she
identifies with late ’80s sitcom characters
Denise Huxtable, Zach Morris and Uncle
Jesse; she is a “borderline vegan” who fucks
with brie cheese; her Vietnamese parents
listened to Lionel Ritchie and Yanni while she
was growing up. Yar lol etc…but Nguyen’s
music doesn’t really need to be quirkified—or,
for that matter, obscured behind a scrim
of irony just because it happens to be one
hundred percent pop loveliness. A veteran
of the Northern Virginia coffee house/open
mic circuit during high school, Nguyen
has been peddling her wares—sunny day
melodies with slyly dark lyrics—for a couple
years now, and late January saw the release
of her first proper album, We Brave Bee
Stings and All, on a proper label (Kill Rock
Stars). For the record, Nguyen isn’t bothered
by the fact that she had no idea what KRS
even was when founder Slim Moon first
approached her about management (which
is, uh, awesome?), and instead maintains a
peppery optimism about all the proceedings.
“I’m stoked to go on KRS,” she says. “And plus
they give us hoodies.”
Bee Stings’ opening track, “Beat (Health,
Life and Fire)” has a marching, proclamatory
thump and Nguyen’s cloudy, saucy voice
sounds like a less cathartic Chan Marshall,
full of shiny penny charm. “Bag of Hammers,”
the first single, trucks along with smiling

strings and Nguyen’s beatboxing (more
Bobby McFerrin than Rahzel) while she sings
As sharp as I sting/ As sharp as I sing/ It
still soothes you/ Doesn’t it? This is music
for picking yourself up by the bootstraps,
ending a gloomy weekend/relationship,
thinking better about your enemies—the stuff
of instant charmed karma. Unsurprisingly,
Nguyen has already opened up stadiums
for the Indigo Girls, toured with personal
hero/Nonesuch star Laura Veirs, and, as she
notes, “signed a boobie in London!” When
we speak, she is in San Fran for a few weeks,
staying with friends who brew homemade
pomegranate kombucha and preparing
for a life on the road. This spring will see
Nguyen in Paris and Arlington and a bunch
of other places in between, as she blithely
hopscotches her way down a path all the
lovelier for having seen her footprints.

Thao Nguyen on her
friend’s porch in San
Francisco, CA.

ALEX WAGNER

myspace.com/thaomusic

moby.last night
new album april 1st

featuring the single alice
www.moby.com | www.mute.com

PHOTOGRAPHY STEFAN JORA

74 T H E FA D E R

“WE JUST LOOK
WAY COOLER
WITH THE WIND
BLOWING
THROUGH OUR
HAIR.”

GENF
HAPPY
TOGETHER
WHAT HIGH
PLACES FOUND

H

igh Places began as a long distance
relationship. After Brooklyn’s Robert
Barber and Kalamazoo’s Mary Pearson
befriended each other as touring solo artists,
they began mailing each other incomplete
musical ideas for the other to finish, the
collaborative result always more gratifying
than the original. “If Mary’s involved with it,
I can enjoy it a lot more because there is this
other person that makes me step outside of
my brain,” says Barber. “I have all of these
recordings, but without her in the mix, they
feel like something’s missing.”
Listening to High Places is like an epic
white water rafting trip with Gang Gang
Dance or cliff jumping with Jesus. The duo
has blended a sonic smoothie of Pearson’s
lithe vocals, Barber’s thick collage of rhythms
and the Earth’s natural sounds—oddball
ingredients that dart and nose-dive in
directions nearly impossible for the ear
to follow. Each song is fuel for barefooted
spazzery or guiltless navel-gazing, the
cosmic byproduct of two weirdos finding
each other.
Although their intensely DIY stance has
found them at plenty of basement and loft
shows, Barber and Pearson believe the band
is best suited for playing outdoors. “We just
look way cooler with the wind blowing
through our hair,” says Pearson. “Yeah, in
shorts,” adds Barber. High Place’s outlandish
soundsystem of gnarly knobs and weird

frequencies has become somewhat of a
nightmare for sound guys and girls, with
only the less controlling ones willing to let the
duo make their ruckus the way they want
to make it. “In a lot of ways, you can hide
behind that,” says Barber. “It’s almost like
when you have a guitar and you’re playing
clean, you have to be more precise. But if you
have a ton of distortion, you can windmill it
and play behind your head.”
Since Pearson moved to Brooklyn nearly
two years ago to further the duo’s creative
(and platonic!) partnership, High Places have
been playing and writing without much rest.
Between recording a series of split 7-inches
with and for their friends, compiling tracks
for a full length and touring the far reaches
of the country, they are almost always with
each other. “But at the same time we’ll
miss each other super bad when we’re not
together,” admits Barber. “It’s weird, we’re
creepy.”
DAVID BEVAN

o matter who plays London’s Fabric, the
club always seems filled with huggedup/drugged-up teenage drum & bass
ravers and tourists in search of the fabled
speakers underneath the dancefloor. But last
summer when Buraka Som Sistema played
Switch and Sinden’s Get Familiar night, it
was worth dealing with such insalubrious
obstacles. Halfway through their set, BSS
made the entire crowd sit on the ground,
then they unleashed an elephantine drum
roll that propelled everyone to their feet as
they launched into the next track. It was
one of the most jaw-droppingly effusive club
moments I’ve experienced.
Lisbon-based trio Buraka Som Sistema
make kuduro music, but their particular
strain has been mutated by their relationship
with the past and present of Europe’s dance
music. Kuduro began in Luanda, Angola’s
capital city, as far back as the late ’80s, when
African producers trying to make techno
and house invented something entirely new.
They sampled traditional carnival music like
zouk from the Caribbean, as well as semba
and kilapanga from Angola, arranging
the sounds around a basic 4/4 kick drum.
Soon MCs were rapping over the beats
and its popularity spread. Kuduro arrived
almost immediately in Portugal via Angolan
immigrants and eventually made it to the
ears of local DJ and producer Lil John. “There
is nothing else in the world like kuduro,” he

says. “If you go to an African club in Lisbon
it always ends in kuduro.”
Along with DJ Riot (an old production
partner), Lil John got together with Conductor,
an Angolan producer and MC. As Buraka
Som Sistema they combined kuduro with
some more contemporary influences. “Drum
& bass was really big in Lisbon in ’96 or ’97,
and we loved that. Now we love dubstep,”
says Lil John. Although the sounds of urban
London echo throughout their recent Buraka
to the World EP, BSS’s breakout single “Yah!”
(set to be re-released on Modular Records)
recalls the bleepy techno of LFO as much
as anything else. At times it seems that BSS
has made good on kuduro’s original techno
reproduction dreams, even if they’ve possibly
done it by accident.
Buraka Som Sistema’s style pasticherie
has lead to everything from tours with MIA
to remixes of current dubstep anthems like
Rusko’s “Cockney Thug.” It’s also being
heard in both the super clubs of Europe and
the streets of Luanda. “We went to Angola
four weeks ago and we loved it,” says Lil
John. “They knew us on the streets probably
more than they do in Lisbon. It was totally
crazy.”
JOHN MCDONNELL

n a converted Portland warehouse called
the Oak Street, Honey Owens lives in
a loft with her cats Casper and Tiger and
her boyfriend Adam Forkner, who makes
music as White Rainbow. Below them is
Adrian Orange, creating quavering folk, and
under him is the office of his label, Marriage
Records. Owens has been in Portland for 11
years, doing what you do in the Northwest:
starting lots of bands and playing in
everyone else’s. She’s cleared rooms with
the outer-orbit rock experimentalists JackieO Motherfucker, co-run a CD-R label with
Forkner called Yarnlazer and co-owned
bars. The whole time she’s been making
psychedelic, reverby shoegaze free jazz
under the name Valet, and will release her
most recent album Naked Acid on Kranky.
“This whole record is this kind of ‘I live in the
Northwest but what would happen if I was
ancient and I lived here and went through
time and was psychic’ thing,” she says. Like
a fever dream, Naked Acid weaves through
your brain until it ends and you’re left trying
to figure out what you just heard and why
you can’t remember any of it. Then you want
to listen again. It’s so fluid that it’s almost like
it doesn’t exist.
Though Naked Acid is loosely a concept
album based on Owens’ perception of
Portland, it is also about her idea of the
original woman, as well as her dreams about
Casper and Tiger. The whole thing sounds

pretty fucking alien, but it’s also her most
accessible album yet. “It’s like when you look
in a mirror and you’re like, Oh I’m not very
good looking,” Owens says. “You spend your
whole life trying to get away from that first
thing, trying to become something else, then
all of a sudden you make something you
really like, and you pull up the first thing you
made and you are like, Whoa, it’s the same
thing. My essence is in all of this.”
Unintelligible words—vowels and consonants
fractured and tonal—flit in and out of the songs,
making the music sound like the perma-grey
top left corner of this country, as occasional
bursts of bright hot desert heat punch through
in clipped guitar strains. It’s an album for
anywhere, but Owens makes it about Portland,
because ultimately she and it are the same.

Valet at the Oak Street
in Portland, OR.

Each and every week the FADER team brings you two hours of the best internet radio in the
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SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH

myspace.com/honeyowens

THE FADER
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“THE LET OUT”

Every Friday on East Village Radio

Listen live from 6-8pm EST or subscribe to the podcast
www.eastvillageradio.com
PHOTOGRAPHY LEAH NASH

uck Buttons’ “Bright Tomorrow” begins
with the incessant hammer of a
mechanized bass drum. From there, sheets
of static and melody build methodically
over the beat, threatening to punish, but
never causing any pain. But just when it
seems like the beast is powering down, the
song transforms into a gauzy freak out of
mangled threats and circuitry climbing
down your throat. Then it’s gone. And all
that’s left is that same bass drum thud and
you, staring stupidly at the back wall of
your mind.
Fuck Buttons performances are infamous
for improvised screaming into plastic toy
microphones and bruising decibel levels,
and when talking to childhood skate buds
Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power,
they come off more like adolescents with
nothing to prove than masters of dynamic
sound collages. “There’s never been a point,
really,” says Hung. “We’ve just literally played
with anything we wanted.”
When Hung and Power formed Fuck
Buttons in 2004 while attending art school
in Bristol, they just wanted to make full-on
abrasive noise. After their initial gigs were
greeted less than ecstatically (they literally
had the plug pulled on them during their
second show), their songs began to change
into a woozier brew. The hymn-like keyboard
melodies and tribal programming help soften
the blow of an alienating genre, making it

nearly accessible. “It’s nice to really hurt
people’s ears, but I guess we grew bored of
that kind of thing,” says Power. “Noise doesn’t
have to make you want to hurt yourself. It
can be nice. It can be joyful.”
Along with pending world tour plans,
Fuck Buttons has also signed with the label
arm of festival gurus All Tomorrow’s Parties,
who will release their debut album, Street
Horrrsing. Recorded with Mogwai’s John
Cummings and Part Chimp’s Tim Cedar,
the 25-year-olds insist there is no grand
statement behind all the racket. “One thing
I’ve learned about approaching work is to
not intellectualize it during the process,”
Hung says. “When we’re playing and when
we’re making music, it’s literally what we
feel is right. We’re doing exactly what we
want to do.”
Well, obviously. It’s hard to imagine anyone
would have told them to name the band
Fuck Buttons.
SAM DUKE

Fuck Buttons at Candid
Cafe in Angel, London.

myspace.com/fuckbuttons

PHOTOGRAPHY IVOR PRICKETT

8 2 T H E FA D E R

“I’M LIKE A
SLAVE TO
MY OWN
SEXUALITY.”

GENF
WILDIN
SWEAT.X’S
COOCHIE CLASH
(NOW IN
HYPER-COLOR!)

S

poek Mathambo is a slippery postApartheid glam-rap prince from Soweto
who is descended from distant African royalty,
or Jewish, or both. In addition to our online
communications trail, I have two weeks’ worth
of phone bills—a Paris mobile, a London office
number, some digits that connect to a voice
speaking Arabic—to prove how hard it is to
catch up to him.
Mathambo wasn’t always so busy. “As a
teenager I was fucking up with the girls!” he
says. “Then I hit this bridge where I started
getting mad girls and started getting busier
and busier. Now I’m like a slave to my own
sexuality and that development is bang with
the music.”
Making smart, dirty, overwhelming music—
and fucking—is just part of Mathambo’s
Sweat.X project with Markus Wormstorm, a
white South African he met when they were
both actors in a short film. Ebonyivorytron
isn’t simply the title of their first EP, it’s also a
mission statement that has struck a chord
across Africa’s bottom. Now-thing young
designers from Capetown and beyond have
stepped in to help realize Sweat.X’s wildstyle
afrofuturist vision where tailored neon
dashikis and cyclops shades jostle with
culturally complicated robot minstrel outfits.
Wormstorm spent years on IDM
productions and Mathambo started rapping
when he was nine, but when Sweat.X was
born two years back, they spiked their styles

with what Mathambo calls “a speeded-up
idea of what that deep heavy funk could be.”
That funk is kwaito, South Africa’s hugely
popular, blinged-out, slowed-down house.
Cop Sweat.X’s free Nuflex Cowabunga Sex
Mix online and you’ll realize that, no, it doesn’t
sound anything like kwaito, but it’s guaranteed
to burn down any house party.
When asked about his favorite performance,
Mathambo replies, “A hyper-glamorous show
in France.” Then he explains, “My memory
of it is skewed because the photography that
came out of it was so beautiful. It’s kind of a
tainted memory because it looks so fuckin’
glamorous!” Replay that show through digital
visions on a computer screen and Sweat.X
are easily the most colorful kids in the room.
Zoom in: Wormstorm stabs buttons to unleash
throbbing nu rave electro that switches up
every few bars. Pan left: Mathambo raps
about “bulimic bitches wasting my money”
and skipping “from Soweto to the mall to
the Louvre.” Pullout widescreen: the camera
captures girls everywhere and a smiling black
man in a dapper suit and sunglasses, the
gold chain gracing his neck flagrantly brass.
Pre-recorded deadpan chants from Sweat.X
conspirator Wendy House tell a compliant
audience: Go black, go low, go fast/ Go pussy,
go titties, go ass! It’s hard to disobey. African
coochie pop redefines Eurochic.
JACE CLAYTON

Spoek and friend in
Newtown, Johannesburg.

myspace.com/sweatx

PHOTOGRAPHY KRISANNE JOHNSON

8 4 T H E FA D E R

The International Rescue Committee has been aiding and rescuing refugees from conflict areas for 75 years. Help at theIRC.org
FROM HARM TO HOME

We flew to Ghana, walked the streets of South Africa, dressed up
in Mozambique. We emailed Mali, called France and made contacts
in Portugal. We asked Dutchmen about Ethiopia and went to
Brooklyn to get Nigerian records. Africa is bigger than its borders
and its culture is global.

DES IG N & T YPO G R APH Y JÉR ÉMEY BÉG EL

As Johannesburg steps onto the world stage,
the indestructible beat of kwaito competes
with foreign sounds for the city’s soul

KWAITO
WILL
NEVER
DIE

STORY EDWIN “STATS” HOUGHTON PHOTOGRAPHY KRISANNE JOHNSON

KWA ITO

tep off a plane into a lounge
full of artsy types in Johannesburg’s Melville district and ask them what Jo’burg
is really about and they’ll tell you straight out: Kwaito is dead. Next they’ll start
listing their favorite kwaito songs, snap your picture, ask you where you got your
jacket, buy you a drink and before you know it you’ll be debating the relative
merits of photography versus music as a medium of expression. Shortly after
that, a drunk choreographer from Soweto will be breathing whisky in your
ear, telling you that Mandela sold the country out and black South Africans need
to get together and run all the whites out, just like dictator Robert Mugabe did
in neighboring Zimbabwe. “Mugabe did it in a really dumb way…” conﬁdes
dude, with a look that says you get it, you’re from New York. “We need to do it
the smart way.”
Drive around Soweto on a Saturday night looking for spots and you might
start to believe them—at least about the kwaito thing. Such a mission means
navigating the long stretches of silent streets that separate one club from
another only to be stopped at the gate and told, “No techies [sneakers]. Strictly
house and R&B.”
Dead or alive, the landscape that gave birth to South Africa’s only indigenous
electronic music has changed beyond all recognition. A hypnotic mid-tempo
pulse somewhere between reggaeton and a Chicago stepper’s beat, ﬂeshed out
with the urgent mix of Africanized English and native languages called “vernac,”
kwaito was born in the black townships of Apartheid-era South Africa just before
the racist regime fell apart back in the early ’90s. When democracy came, the
unstoppable 4/4 sub on every beat, the offbeat hi-hat marching between and the
upward melodies all captured the new energy of independence and ﬂourished in
the “grey areas”—neighborhoods like Yeoville and Hillbrow which were among
the ﬁrst to be racially integrated. By the turn of the millennium, Rockey Street
in Yeoville grew with the genre’s rise, as venues like Rockafella’s and Tandoor
featured kwaito shows every week, if not every night. Now, Soweto—not a
traditional name but an abbreviation of SOuth WEstern TOwnships—is no longer
a ghetto, but a sprawling city unto itself. Light years from the images of school
kids and white soldiers clashing amid tin shacks that inevitably accompanied its
name in 1980s news clips, 2008 Soweto houses shiny monuments to democracy
like the Mandela Museum, as well as some 20 or so millionaires and as much
diversity—from posh suburbs to shantytowns—within its wide reach as the
rest of the country combined. Meanwhile, Hillbrow has become so ﬂooded
with immigrants—mostly Nigerians and Zimbabweans ﬂeeing the Mugabe
regime—that these days people just call it “Zimbrow.” The clubs on Rockey
Street are shuttered and in Yeoville racial harmony has given way to a crime
wave so out of control that the area is speciﬁed by name in guidebooks and
travel advisories with a “here be dragons” type warning.
The crowd at the Soweto Music Festival.

9 4 T H E FA D E R

KWA ITO

But the new South Africa is not all crime and dystopia. Johannesburg—Jozi to
natives—is bubbling: with optimism, with preparations for the World Cup, with
talk of South Africa joining the UN Security Council. Like the generation that
spawned it, kwaito has not so much disappeared as moved uptown. Appropriately
it’s at a ﬂossy industry event in the booming business hub called Newtown that I
get my ﬁrst real taste of it. In a tent underneath the iconic Mandela bridge I get a
few minutes to sit and build with Mr. Bouga Luv Two Shoes, a rapper born Kabelo
Mabalane who can plausibly claim to be king of this kwaito shit. As front-man
for the trio TKZEE, he revolutionized the genre in the late ’90s, transforming a
white label dance style built on one word hooks into pop music with full song
structures. “Shibobo”—a football anthem that interpolated Europe’s “Final
Countdown” into a kwaito beat long before Bonde do Role raided their hair metal
closet—was propelled by South Africa’s ﬁrst appearance at the World Cup into
the country’s biggest and fastest selling single of the decade. It was just one of
TKZEE’s many genre-deﬁning hits. Since their split some six years ago, Kabelo’s
remained constantly in the spotlight, both for his solo albums and his personal
saga, including a battle with drug addiction and reinvention as a bodybuilding
born again Christian. When we talk he’s just taken a triumphant star turn hosting
the South African Music Awards, but he’s oddly downbeat about the musical form
he’s championed. “We’re going through a big transition right now,” he explains.
“Four or ﬁve years ago our music was quite prevalent in the clubs, but now it’s
out. Kwaito is more like in people’s houses, the lifestyle side of things.”
If kwaito is in the houses, then house music is in the clubs, and Kabelo, like
kwaito, is struggling to keep up with the pace of change in SA. “What’s happened
to this country over the past 10 years is frightening,” he says. “They’ve done a
survey to say that when we were big in the late ’90s, people were receiving about

“IN ’94, THE ELECTIONS CAME,
SOUTH AFRICA BECAME A FREE COUNTRY,
BOOM! KWAITO WAS BORN.
WHO CAME UP WITH THE TERM?
I DON’T KNOW. KWAITO
JUST MEANS HOT.”—DJ CLEO
three hundred messages a day through the media. Compared to today, people
are receiving a minimum of four thousand. And that’s visual. It’s kind of like, the
electricity in the air, that’s why I feel the house music thing is just so happening
right now because it just goes hand in hand with all the…gadgets.” A subdued
superstar, Kabelo doesn’t even waste too much time talking up his soon-to-bereleased solo record, modestly titled I Am King. Instead he puts the future of
kwaito on a TKZEE reunion slated for mid-year. “With the three guys, the dreams
are just bigger, everything is bigger,” he says. “With me, it can only go so far. I’ll
be honest, I’ve chased TKZEE’s success for the longest time, but none of us come
close to the three of us. When it’s the three of us, I mean, jeez, it’s big.”
While reports of kwaito’s death have been somewhat exaggerated, one thing
Kabelo’s right about is that on a whirlwind survey of Jozi’s night spots, house
music rules the set, with European imports mixing more or less seamlessly with
South African productions by DJ Fresh or Bantu Soul. It’s weird to see a crowd
go crazy for “Put Your Hands Up for Detroit” in a corner of the world where most
people assume Detroit and Chicago must be part of the UK because it’s all “ova
seas” anyway. But house music is a natural counterpart to a certain freaknik
atmosphere that pervades the city right now, that electricity in the air Kabelo
mentioned. My initial lounge encounter was no ﬂuke. Everywhere you go in Jozi—
from trendy Melville to the townships—the moneyed, the poor and the hustlers in
between are all posing off, scoping one another out, snapping pics and jumping
into conversation with total strangers. Years after the end of Apartheid and the
commencement of real democracy, South Africa’s coming out party is just getting
into full swing.
Dancing near the taxi rank in Alexandra township.

T H E FADER 97

KWA ITO

The PYTs hitting drinking age now are the ﬁrst generation to grow up without
the mental segregation that came with Apartheid. Every camera snap, every pose
is an expression of their birthright, a dance that says: our moment, our city, our
country, our space, ours. Even the Mugabe talk feels less like the frustration of
the oppressed and more like the joy of realizing this is our debate, our decision.
To understand the vibe, think the optimism of Motown, the pageant of black
expressionism that was late ’90s Atlanta, the “Good Times” of Chic. Then multiply
it by a whole country.
House music is the soundtrack of those aspirations, and the future wouldn’t
look good for kwaito except that kwaito in some sense is house music. “First you
had Groove City 1, 2, 3, 4. Then you had House Masters, and then you had LA
Beat, Vol 1-4 and Dance City 1-5. I had all those tapes, whooo!” says Cleophas
Moneypao, better known as producer DJ Cleo. Cleo is so commonly referred to
as “the Timbaland of kwaito,” that it’s more of a nickname than a boast. Masaitall with hair dyed beach boy blond and a popped-collar hot pink polo shirt, he
is bent over his home studio’s mixing board, cuing up beats and reminiscing.
“As far back as I can remember, the country was in a turbulent time,” he says.
“You had everyone singing about the struggle: ‘One settla, one bullet,’ ‘Kill the
Boers.’ Those songs are nothing to be proud of now. I mean, a small percentage
yes, because they were like some sort of mission statement. Now the mission
has been achieved, I don’t even play those songs. ’94, the elections came, South
Africa became a free country. Independence day. Boom! The music changed
completely. Now, black people, we can sing about whatever we want. Kwaito was
born. Who came up with the term? I don’t know. Kwaito just means hot.”
Circa 1994, “hot” meant bootlegging house tracks and re-Africanizing them—
slowing them to folk speed, adding zulu jive melodies and catchphrases in vernac.

“WHAT’S HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY
OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS
IS FRIGHTENING. IT’S KIND OF LIKE,
THE ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR.”—KABELO MABALANE
Though pioneers like Cleo and Kabelo have long since raised the bar for original
production, many kwaito records still rely on that same architecture of 909 traps
and electric pianos. Much of its originality comes in the lyrical content and the
township subculture attached to it: the pantsula dance style; the uniform—a
ﬂoppy Gilligan hat called a sporty (pronounced spotty), Dickies and Pro-Keds
or Chuck Taylor techies; the slang called tsotsi-taal, or gangster talk. Take all
that away and kwaito is basically slow house, making the current resurgence a
weird return to its roots. But although Cleo is equally deft at house and hip-hop
production, he doesn’t see himself going in that direction. “It’s inspired me to
wanna do kwaito more, and release my own kwaito album,” he says. “I’m taking
it back to its roots, when kwaito was kwaito. Kwaito is dance music, it was a
beat before anything.” Just then he loses the plot of his sentence and spaces
out to the instrumental playing in the background. “I think that’s the nicest
groove ever discovered on planet Earth. I’ve always been one to say, ‘Kwaito will
never die.’ I still stand by that, kwaito will never die.”
In the next room of DJ Cleo’s suburban compound is Brickz, one of Cleo’s
artists and the author of “Left, Right,” the kwaito anthem of the moment. He
convinces me to join him later in the week for a Styrofoam plate of cow’s head
(tastier than it sounds) in the section of Soweto called Zola. For him, visiting
the “location,” as he calls his old hood, means locals hailing him like the
ghetto celebrity he is and little kids bopping behind the car doing the “Left,
Right” dance. Like almost every artist I speak to—Cleo, Brown Dash, Drencko,
Gumshev—Brickz tells me kwaito is dead but he personally is going to resurrect
it. Of all people I poll in SA, the one who is best able to articulate the line
between house and kwaito—and what’s at stake in the difference—is a former
DJ called Mdu, or just “The General.” Looking every inch the elder statesman
in dashiki and Dick Gregory beard, Mdu made radio station YFM synonymous
Kwaito in the streets of Alexandra township.

T H E FADER 101

KWA ITO

with kwaito as program director, then left when its musical selection followed
its audience into premature middle age, instead of reaching out to the next
generation of township youth. Though he feels kwaito may have to change,
it’s not going to lose the support of the indie labels, African language radio
stations and the township people. They, like him, are turned off by “the
sanitized nature of house music. It’s like the new South African trend to wear
suits, it ﬁts into some kind of perception of what a civilized world is. And you
can’t do that to kwaito.”
If there’s one section of the cultural landscape that hasn’t changed, it’s Alex.
Established back in 1912, Alexandra is Jo’burg’s oldest black community, even
pre-dating Soweto. At Joe’s Butchery, you can select your raw chicken at the
counter and then have it cooked to taste at the outdoor grill that turns into a
love jones backyard barbecue every Sunday afternoon. The DJ plays house,
but the vibe is kwaito in a way that’s almost impossible to explain—the music
is somehow reinvented every week when CDJs are pitched down to minus 16
until the house becomes African reggaeton. From Joe’s everyone migrates to
an open air club up the street, and then on to the exclusive Club Zambezi. The
next night they repeat the ritual on a bigger scale, spilling out of a shebeensized nightclub called Cheeks to transform 15th street into a Monday night
street dance, like a Jamaican soundclash without the warlike undercurrent…
or the gender politics. Here, girls grind openly on girls and rail-thin township
lady-boys in full make up out-whine their female rivals.
Somewhere in this club crawl I let myself get kidnapped by Gloria and
Itu, two Alex girls who take me on the full-package tour, including: a stop by
Gloria’s house to meet an impressive squad of cousins, loitering in a beauty

“I THINK THAT’S THE NICEST GROOVE EVER
DISCOVERED ON PLANET EARTH.
YOU KNOW, THE KICK JUST GIVES THE
RHYTHM AND THE SNARE IN-BETWEEN.
THAT’S THE SIMPLEST,
NICEST GROOVE.”—DJ CLEO
parlor and collecting a plastic jug of water from the public standpipe to cool
off Itu’s overheating radiator. They seem to know exactly everybody in Alex
and they have to stop for every Audi A4 coming the other direction to say,
Nigga what? Meet our new friend from ova seas. Their take on kwaito is
pretty much the same as everyone else, but the whole time they seem to be
conducting an unspoken seminar on what it really is. It exists not just in the
vernac rapping and distinctive beat on record but also in a DJ’s blend from
slow house to Daddy Yankee to a new age steppers beat like Slum Village’s
“Disko.” It’s in the way you say “ayebo” and pose off for the whole club to
see, give the next man a thumb ﬂick and a greeting of “sharp-sharp.” Kwaito
the industry may beneﬁt from a backlash against sanitized house and the
sanitized identity it represents—the nationalistic swing of South Africa’s
recent election seems to suggest this—or it may collapse, a victim of its own
success. But kwaito as a subculture is alive and kicking in Alex. Pretoria and
Durban and Capetown all have their own scenes and the same Zimbabwean
refugees that have made Hillbrow unrecognizable are now creating an
audience for kwaito in London. At around 3AM when the energy on 15th street
is winding down, some dude in a sporty will jump on top of a speaker stack
or a dumpster and bust some pantsula steps, stiff arms held out dramatically,
accentuating the long angles of the body like something between a pop & lock
contortion and those ’70s funk poses you see on the intro to Good Times. The
slim, dreadlocked girl running the CDJs looks out the plexiglass window of
Cheeks, across the sea of people and the twinkling valley of shanties behind
them, pitches down a house record that sounds more or less like the last one
and suddenly everybody goes crazy. F
Above: The ubiquitious sporty. Previous spread, bottom right: Brickz.

t’s a superﬁcial thing, and at this point
probably more curse than blessing,
but the ﬁrst thing that hits you about
the South African dub metal quartet
BLK JKS is their look. There’s a certain
afropunk unity to their style that
makes them seem like a movement
unto themselves, yet even more
striking is how strong a presence each
member has, pulling away from that
center in his own direction. There’s
guitarist Mpumi Mcata, reggae star
handsome in his ’80s Black Uhuru
wears. Tshepang Ramoba, with
drummer’s arms and those thick
baobab dreads. The bassist, Moleﬁ
Makananise, with his professorial
air and the ubiquitous kwaito-style
sporty (pronounced “spotty”) on his head. And then there’s Linda
Buthelezi, the frontman: shirt buttoned all the way up and thick
glasses sitting heavily on his babyface. He looks tight-laced and
intellectual in a young Dr Frankenstein kind of way, so that even when
he’s quiet you can sense a tortured side that’s got to come out—if not
in music, then somewhere.
If you can see it, then A&Rs can deﬁnitely see it, and perhaps not
surprisingly, BLK JKS (pronounced “black jacks”) are something of a
hot property lately. The vapors started with a self-titled EP pressed
up for their birthday gig at the Apartheid Museum in a Johannesburg
theme park called Gold Reef City two years ago. Those ﬁve songs
ﬂoated around the web for a minute, ultimately turning up as a
limited edition CD in certain stores in London and New York last June.
It’s a heavy collection. “Lakeside” starts the set with a minor-keyed
“House of the Rising Sun” intro that leads into grungy dub, Mcata’s
rhythm guitar turning over on itself in the mix as Buthelezi moans
ominously about paramedics and broken lesions. Just when you give
up on deciphering this pseudo-medical diatribe, he breaks into a Zulu
jive falsetto and the beat morphs into something like ska, the guitar
changing into ﬁnely-worked Ernest Ranglin trills. “UmZabalazo” is an
echoey mosh pit interpretation of a toyi-toyi, an anti-Apartheid protest
chant based on the vocalized sound of AK-47s. If it doesn’t exactly
celebrate the possibility of black fascism implicit in those war cries,
then it doesn’t blink at the idea either. You can imagine antecedents
to their sound if you try—the nya-rock of Cymande, maybe Fishbone
if they broke through their surf metal conceits into something deeper,
more afrogothic—but you’d more likely extrapolate the existence of
an unknown black planet to explain BLK JKS’ origin. That sense of
something new has hovered around them since their very ﬁrst gig—a
club rehearsal that turned into a show as on-lookers gathered. The
immediate word of mouth about those black dudes that play that
weird music underscores how desperately South Africa—or at least
its all-white indie rock scene—needed that something.

PHONETICALLY. SO WE’RE LIKE, “WE GOT A LANGUAGE THAT DOES DA- DADA-DA VERY WELL

Those expectations, and the look that so effortlessly embodies
them, are BLK JKS main problems these days. “We’ve met with most
of the majors in SA, they come to us like, ‘Black rock band, sign them
and make a lot of money.’ Then they ﬁnd out we’re crazy,” explains
Mcata, sitting in a café in Melville, a suburb of Johannesburg that’s
painted a Martian purple by the Jacaranda trees blooming everywhere
in the November spring. Mcata is clearly the spokesman and allaround conceptualizer for the Jacks, to such an extent his credits in
the liner notes could easily read, “Mpumi Mcata: Rhythm Guitar/
Minister of Propaganda.” Buthelezi, the vocalist and main lyricist is
actually the least vocal of the four. These two form the original core of
the group, having grown up together in a section of East Rand called
Spruitview. BLK JKS was formed when Buthelezi and Mcata brought
on more experienced musicians Makananise and Ramoba, both from
Soweto, to form the rhythm section.
The insanity charge Mcata mentions may not be totally unfounded.
The main result of the Jacks’ initial buzz was a chance to start
recording at SABC—the country’s biggest and best-equipped studio,
housed beneath a corporate tower that dominates, no, intimidates
Jo’burg’s skyline. Those sessions became the unedited masters of an
LP project titled After Robots (in SA, trafﬁc lights are called robots.
Nobody knows why). Nominally a sort of rock opera built around a
surreal Mulholland Drive-esque trip through the city, the music is
nebulous, sprawling and psychedelic, the narrative often seeming like
a pretext for long, winding jams full of that one mind, four directions
dynamic. “It’s better when we’re not on the same page,” says Mcata.
“On those masters, there’s parts where we play for like 35 minutes
of not listening to each other. Like, Moleﬁ’s checking the tone on
his bass, and just so that it doesn’t make you physically sick, I’m
checking in the same key. Tshepang is doing his thing on the drum,
getting everything set up, and basically what you hear is the most
beautiful thing.”
Like the jams, the conversation in the café tends to drift,
meandering through church choirs, the Mars Volta, Boyz II Men,
Tortoise, Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona, Jack Dejohnette,
Canadian psyche and luminaries mostly unknown outside of SA like
Vusi Mahlasela and Busi Mhlongo. Trying to wrap his tongue around
the role that inﬂuences play in the Jacks’ sound, Makananise gets
a little worked up, “We’re listening to all different stuff, but the ﬁrst
time we played together I was like, ‘Yeah! Shit like this exists!’ Yes,
but no…it’s something quite hard, to be fair. I never seen that, to
be honest…” And then he lapses into silence, defeated by what
he is trying to express. He’s more comfortable talking formally
about the music, which makes sense, since it is his session bassistability to play comfortably in many different styles that holds the
schizophrenia together.
In a way, the secret ingredient of BLK JKS’ sound is the long and
venerable tradition of township jazz that pervades the musicianship
of Makananise and Ramoba. As Makananise says, “In jazz there are
suspended chords and stuff that gives you some kind of a discord. If
Mpumi’s playing his fears at that moment when I come in, sometimes
I have to play what I feel too, but in the process I have to ﬁgure out

T H E FADER 1 1 3

B L K JKS

where he is. That’s where the jazz shit comes in.”
There’s also metal there, in the sense of Cream, Deep
Purple and early-early Sabbath, when metal was
not a genre with rules and uniforms but a tendency,
a serrated edge occasionally cutting the surface
of rhythm and blues like the tailfin of something
terrifying just below the surface. Then there are the
traditional South African strains the members grew
up with, alongside Fela and reggae. Somehow the
force of all those elements swinging away at each
other lifts the whole thing off the ground like a
fish-tailing helicopter.
In an attempt to position the Jacks within this
swirl of traditions, Mcata says, “I feel like we are like
a growth on the side of not just the South African
thing, but the African thing. An abscess. It could
either implode, explode or, like, give the continent
super powers.” It seems somehow appropriate to
this dysfunctional pan-Africanism that even BLK JKS’
shared South African identity comes from different
language groups: Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana and Pedi. This
polylinguism expands the Jacks’ range rather than
limiting it. “When you talk about vernac [vernacular]
and how you bring that in it’s always melody ﬁrst,”
says Mcata. “If you have a big melody, putting
words to it is a drag. Some languages just ﬁt better
phonetically, so we’ll be like, ‘Oh we got a language
that does da-dada-da very well.’”
Put four dudes in a room with four different
languages, a few words in common and a movie script
to shoot, they might come back with a mess of a ﬁlm
or maybe some grand Chomskian thesis that offers a
breakthrough understanding about the structure of
language itself. After Robots sounds like that at times,
and though the South African majors are hardly good
guys in this story, they could perhaps be forgiven if
they didn’t know what the fuck to do with the fourheaded dub monster that walked into their office
speaking in tongues, when all they wanted was the
local equivalent of Living Colour. The SABC sessions
were partly paid for with a Jacks promo spot on
national radio, adding further to their aura. But with
no label and no money to pay for their completion, the
masters languish raw and unmixed under the tower.
The whole experience has left the group less
inclined than ever to target their music for any
imagined audience. “Now? Fuck it, we’ll play
wherever,” says Mcata. “Forget the whole, ‘We’re
gonna get the rastas to like our rock.’ If you have
a gig, call us. Jazz event, whatever, we become the
color of the gig. We don’t have a home.” As a result,
their résumé is less a catalog of recordings than a
The Killarney loft that serves as BLK JKS headquarters.

1 14 T H E FA DE R

collection of war stories about the weirdest shows
imaginable: the old jail in Grahamstown, Youth Day
at the Apartheid Museum, a private performance
raising money for rural soccer teams held on the
land of a wealthy farmer that meant driving ﬁve
hours out into the veldt and sleeping beneath the
heads of the farmer’s hunting trophies. There was
the gig for kwaito station YFM with rapper HHP and
the one where Ramoba got in a shouting match with
the homeless guy standing on a pedestal as some
kind of performance art. With each of these gigs, the
legend—and the expectations—continued to grow.
Even if they were too weird for primetime, “the only
black rock band in South Africa” was too good for
the press to resist and sooner or later the buzz had
to go international. 2007 brought an offer from
Diplo’s Mad Decent label, management by exFADER editor Knox Robinson, the appearance of
a collector’s 10-inch of “Lakeside” in Other Music
and Rough Trade, and a booking for SXSW for
2008, roughly in that order.
The Jacks meanwhile, having more or less given
up on storming the SABC tower to liberate Robots,
started on a series of lo-ﬁ mini-disc recordings called
Kilani Sessions after the sunny, eclectic Killarney
loft of Makananise’s white girlfriend that serves as
the Jacks’ headquarters. The new recordings have, if
possible, even less light, more mass, more sucking
gravity than After Robots. “Baragawana” brings more
of Buthelezi’s medical obsessions, with references to
the largest hospital in Africa. In “Vampire Stand-by
Power” he employs a metaphor about machines using
40% of the electric current even when they’re off that
somehow becomes the story of a pregnant girl and
her dysmorphic baby. “Tinstaa” starts with the sound
of CD skipping malfunctions, dissolving into acoustic
blue-veldt guitarwork before the Sabbath-like bass
comes in under the refrain, One by one, they gonna
shoot us down. There are moments here that sound
like African metal, not a pastiche of inﬂuences but a
different thing altogether.
Back at the café, after sitting out of the
conversation for a good hour, Makananise picks up
his thread exactly where he wrestled it into silence,
“I think what I was trying to say before, that from
the ﬁrst time we played together, I thought that BLK
JKS could be like unexplored territory…some totally
different kind of music.” It’s not the vision, so much as
the sincerity, the struggle to articulate it, that give you
pause. It’s enough to make you wonder what you wish
more for the Jacks: that everything clicks into a fully
realized visit to the black planet repeatedly glimpsed
in the soup of their mind jams, or that they just keep
looking forever, standing, so to speak, on the verge of
getting it on, mapping their own brains as they go. &

T H E FADER 1 1 5

MODERN
HYMNS
The unassuming Esau Mwamwaya is poised
to bring his uplifting vibe to the global pop
sphereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from a junk shop in East London

STORY SAR AH BENT L EY PH OTO G R APH Y L IZ JO H NS O N ART U R

ESAU MWAMWAYA

“

his is the police.
The party is over.” It’s 2:30 AM and the constabulary have come to eject
a hundred-plus revellers—mainly inebriated artsy kids in smash-andgrab ensembles of nu rave, boho and other bugged out wears—from
a squat party going off in an unused toilet factory in South London.
Among the throng are Johan Karlberg and Etienne Tron of London-based
production outﬁt Radioclit and their latest protégé, Malawian singer
Esau Mwamwaya. Thirty minutes earlier, during Tron’s DJ set, Mwamwaya
performed an impromptu PA of his song “Tengazako”—“Take what’s
yours” in Chichewa—a sweet afropop melody voiced over MIA’s Clashsampling “Paper Planes” beat. The tune has created a load of internet
hype around Mwamwaya and though no one at the party knew who he
was or what the hell language he was singing in, they responded to it with
the same fervor as they would a Klaxons or Simian Mobile Disco show.
As the trio wades towards the exit through bottles, lolling bodies, broken
hand fans and Mickey Mouse ears, they are accosted by a posse of dudes
in the mold of Pete Doherty, who are propping up chicks in 1940s frocks
and red lips. “Awesome sound, man…” says the least destroyed one.
“No idea what you’re singing about…but fucking awesome sound.”
After decades of being lost in the decidedly uncool and absurdly allencompassing sonic terrain of world music, contemporary African sounds
like kuduro and Cote d’Ivoire party music coupé decallé are suddenly
on London’s radar. Unlike France, where African music is comparatively
mainstream (in 2005 Malian duo Amadou et Miriam’s album Dimanche à
Bamako reached number two and sold 300,000 units domestically), the
UK’s immigration history has kept it a stronghold for West Indian culture
with scant attention paid to Africa—until now. In the last two years, BBC
1xtra has launched a weekly African Rhythms show, new club nights like
Kalabash and Out of Africa play upfront sounds from the continent, and
in July 2007 the UK’s ﬁrst legal African radio station, Voice of Africa, began
broadcasting on 93.4FM. If there were an ideal moment for an artist
like Mwamwaya to launch, it would be now. The fact that Radioclit—a
production outﬁt on the frontline of adventurous pop music—have

decided to record Mwamwaya for their first artist-driven album is
a massive testament to that. As Tron says, “The time is now for
African sounds.”
Malawi, tucked into the continent’s left breast between Tanzania and
Mozambique, is known as the heart of Africa. Mwamwaya was born there
in 1975, 11 years after the country gained independence from Britain. He
grew up with nine brothers and sisters in the capital city of Lilongwe. Like
the majority of Malawian youth, he had a traditional upbringing deﬁned
by family, Christian values and the strict rules of President Hastings
Banda, who governed the country as a one-party state from 1970 until
the 1993 referendum. During this era, entertainment and media were
heavily censored. Women were forbidden from wearing trousers or skirts
above the knee and men from wearing hair past the collar. The main radio
stations played a few traditional Malawian musical genres like tchopa,
manganje and vimbuza, but the bulk of broadcasts featured government
propaganda. Mwamwaya’s father, however, was a civil servant and a
music lover who bought tapes back home whenever he travelled abroad
for work. The elder Mwamwaya introduced his son to the joys of Jim
Reeves, Gregory Isaacs and Dolly Parton, while Esau’s older brothers
indoctrinated him in Lionel Ritchie and locally-produced pop.
Mwamwaya began singing at a young age. At his audition for the
Heaters—the house band of one of Lilongwe’s few plush nightspots—
Mwamwaya sang Ken Boothe’s “Everything I Own,” Elton John’s
“Sacriﬁce” and Burning Spear’s “Identity.” At 22, he’d never been in
a band before, yet by the weekend he was the group’s lead singer,
performing a gumball of covers—or “copyrights” as they are called
in Malawi—and traditional songs. Months later during a rehearsal,
he strode over to the drum kit and started to play. Despite having not
touched a drum since his youth (“I’d watched the drummer a bit during
rehearsals,” says Mwamwaya) his efforts impressed his bandmates,
including four ex-members of the hugely successful group Masaka. Two
weeks later, Mwamwaya was singing lead vocals and playing drums, a
talent that prompted Karlberg to dub him “the African Phil Collins.”
When he met Radioclit, however, Africa’s answer to Phil Collins hadn’t
been involved in music since he came to England in 1999. Leaving Malawi
to have “a new life experience” (Britain was easiest because he spoke
the language and didn’t need a visa), Mwamwaya worked in a bakery
and then on a construction site. These days, he owns a second-hand
furniture store in Hackney, where he only stocks items obtained from
house clearances in order to ensure that the goods aren’t stolen. Tron
met Mwamwaya while perusing the store’s eclectic goods—battered
furniture, two meter-long stuffed toy sharks, life-sized ceramic statues of
Bruce Lee. He bought a £30 bike and subsequently invited Mwamwaya
to his housewarming party, where he was introduced to Radioclit partner
Karlberg. “I saw this guy across the room with a massive smile,” Karlberg
says, and after talking music, that night Mwamwaya and Radioclit laid
down “Chalo,” a track about using love to stop the world’s problems.
Esau Mwamwaya with Johan Karlberg
of Radioclit.

“AFTER HEARING ‘CHALO,’ I HAD SO MANY IDEAS. I’VE GOT EIGHT

1 18 T H E FA D E R

YEARS BOTTLED UP INSIDE ME. IT’S A LOT TO GET OUT.”

—ESAU MWAMWAYA

E SAU MWAMWAYA

Since then the tunes haven’t stopped. “It’s exactly what I want to do with music at
the moment,” says Karlberg. “Every time Esau sings something new I get goose bumps.”
For his part, upon hearing “Chalo” Mwamwaya had “so many ideas—I’ve got eight years
bottled up inside me. It’s a lot to get out.”
So far, Mwamwaya has been seizing every insane beat Radioclit has thrown at him—from
Baltimore club and nasty-ass crunk to poppy electro and Enya samples. There are songs in
Chichewa, Swahili, Portuguese and English, the latter two a result of collaborations with
Marina Vello (formerly of Bonde do Role) and MIA. What could sound like a haphazard
pillaging of global grooves works seamlessly, with Mwamwaya’s charismatic voice the light,
upward-seeking yang to Radioclit’s dark production yin. The duo’s tracks earmarked for the
likes of Lil Wayne, Kylie Minogue and Kano have been passed over to their protogé to whip
into 21st century hymns for mankind that, although described by Mwamwaya as “sitting in
the middle of secular and gospel,” are incredibly pious. Regardless of the beat he’s singing
over, Mwamwaya’s cinematic vocals reach for a universal appeal, akin to a Michael Jackson
or Elton John mega hit, but remain bolstered by the lush emotional timbre of African choral
music. As his full repertoire of material plays at the Radioclit studio, it conjures admittedly
hokey new age images of the sun rising over a placid sea or children dancing in the rain
after months of drought. “Every time I hear him sing, I get this image of him standing on a
mountain, arms outstretched, singing to the world,” admits Karlberg. “We’ve tried to make
less pompous tracks—but they always come out like this.”
Though his voice has that mountaintop quality that could make anything sound deep,
Mwamwaya’s lyrics are actually as meaningful as they feel to those who don’t speak the
language. “Chilombo” tackles the AIDS crisis, with Mwamwaya asking his grandparents to
give me a bow and arrow so I can kill the beast. “Zikhulupiliro” urges people to spiritually
unite with lines like God and us is one/ It doesn’t matter what religion you’re from/
Your mom told you one plus three equals four/ My mom told me two plus two equals four.
“Angonde,” the name of his tribe, pays homage to dead ancestors who (as is tradition in
Malawi) are buried in the back garden of the family home. “We believe in family sharing life
and death together,” Mwamwaya explains. In keeping with this tenet, Mwamwaya’s brotherin-law Leonard Simbananiye plays guitar on the record, and his three nieces—11-year-old
twins Zena and Adine, and 18-year-old Louise—have added harmonies.
A distribution deal has yet to be signed (though offers have begun to pour in) and
Radioclit hopes to have a street mixtape out for spring and an album by summer. “The UK
and US are bored of hearing the same shit,” says Tron. “People are ready for something not
in English to come through. Growing up in France listening to Wu-Tang, I didn’t have a clue
what they were talking about, but I was still the biggest fan in the world. Some musicians
are so good they can reach everyone on vibe alone. Esau is like that.” In the meantime,
Mwamwaya will continue to traverse his curious circuit between gigs on London’s
pulsing underground and drum practice for his local church—a testament to both the
unlikeliness of his path and the universality of his sound. As Mwamwaya himself says,
“I can be found everywhere.” &

“EVERY TIME I HEAR HIM SING,
I GET THIS IMAGE OF HIM
STANDING ON A MOUNTAIN,
ARMS OUTSTRETCHED. WE’VE TRIED
TO MAKE LESS POMPOUS TRACKS
BUT THEY ALWAYS
COME OUT LIKE THIS.”
—JOHAN KARLBERG

t h e fader 1 21

Hiplife struggles to break free from itself and
conquer the globe

TOTAL
MADNESS

STO RY P E TE R MAC IA P HOTOGRAPHY CAROLYN DRAKE

H IPLIFE

ating shrimp
at 2AM in a chop shop off Kwame Nkrumah Circle is apparently
the best place to bump into one of the biggest music producers
in Ghana. But when I take my stool, I don’t know that the husky,
goateed guy sitting next to me is Hammer, the country’s megadon
hip-hop specialist. I only know he’s beefing in Twi to the weary
cook about the dancehall-tinged beats and Akon-ically sung hiplife
blasting from the soundsystem across the street, and his protest
is keeping my shrimps from getting grilled. That is Accra though,
a gritty, smoke-scented capital where you might have to stay up
all night to get what you want, where hiplife plays from sunrise
to nearly the next sunrise, and ragga bats battle streetwalking
madmen for every last pesewa.
The next afternoon, when I step into the dank and cramped Hush
Hush Studios, I ﬁnd the grump from the shrimp spot sitting at the
control boards arguing his point once again, this time offering his
own spare slab of G(hana)-funk, for which he has become famous.
Hammer has been an engineer-in-residence at Hush Hush for much
of hiplife’s ascendancy and represents the faction who wants hiplife
to favor its hip-hop roots. The studios are housed in a royal blue
shoebox tucked behind an accountant’s ofﬁce in Awudome Estates,
a planned residential community from the 1960s—Ghana’s halcyon
days—when Kwame Nkrumah was leading the nation after its newly
claimed independence from Britain. Awudome is serene during
the day, when most streets in this dilapidated but developing city
are choked with Opel taxis, stuffed buses and people hustling
somewhere to make something happen. If you’re lucky enough to
ﬁnd the studio (there are few reliable street markers in Accra), but
unlucky enough to show up before 2PM, you’d probably think it had
been closed for months. A peek through its gated windows gives no
indication that it is the epicenter of the genre that has dominated
popular music in Ghana for the better part of a decade and that
now is spreading to cities throughout Africa like Lagos, Monrovia
and Abidjan.
Hiplife came seemingly out of nowhere, brought by a Ghanaian
raised abroad named Reggie Rockstone who rapped in Twi, a
prevalent Akan dialect, over Western-style hip-hop beats. In the
decades before, it was highlife—a Ghanaian invention blending
Caribbean and Cuban inﬂuences with American jazz and traditional
West African instruments and rhythms–that was the country’s
dominant pop music. A few guys had half-rapped over it in the
The crowd at a Kwaw Kese show at Labadi Beach.

T H E FADER 1 25

H IPL IFE

Glimpses of an Accra neighborhood where hiplife lives and breathes.

1 2 6 T HE FA D E R

H IPLIFE

’80s, but none made the leap Rockstone did. He was young and
openly courted a global audience that had long ago forgotten about
highlife and Ghanaian music. And suddenly every kid in Ghana
wanted to make hiplife. Over the next decade, Rockstone’s idea
splintered into strains that incorporated dancehall, soca and R&B,
and reclaimed some of highlife’s instruments and rhythms. Hush
Hush became the scene’s preeminent recording studio.
When I show up there with rapper Kwaw Kese, Hammer is already
surrounded by a dozen boys and one girl who stare at him like
Santa Claus. They know that a song engineered by the hitmaker
will give them an honest chance at making it big. Hammer’s priority
though is ﬁnishing up a song for a pair of Ghanaian-born, Parisianbased venom-spitting twins called Atte’s, who flew in to record
and have secured a guest verse from Kwaw, the maddest rapper in
Ghana and hiplife’s current provocateur.
Kwaw’s voice registers somewhere between tuba and Tuvan
throat singer. Like the immensely popular but less intense Castro
da Destroyer, aka the 50 Cent of Ghana, Kwaw raps exclusively in
Fante, a slangy Akan dialect found in his native Agona Swedru in
the Central Region. It’s a choice that endears him to Ghanaians, but
could hinder his chances elsewhere. “Hip-hop is not about English,
it’s about rhythm, and I have the right rhythm,” he says. “I want
people to understand my language as they want me to understand
theirs. When you come to Ghana, it’s either Twi or Fante. It’s time
we take our language there, so people hear it and want to know
what it means.” I don’t know what it means yet, but Kwaw has one
of the craziest ﬂows in the world, and when he steps into the booth,
everyone goes silent.

“HIP-HOP IS NOT ABOUT ENGLISH,
IT’S ABOUT RHYTHM,
AND I HAVE THE RIGHT RHYTHM.
I WANT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND
MY LANGUAGE AS THEY WANT ME
TO UNDERSTAND THEIRS.”—KWAW KESE
In terms of hiplife’s multivalent deﬁnitions, Kwaw Kese represents
the straight street rap faction. He’s somewhere between Nas and
Lil Wayne—part poet, part lunatic. Driving to Hush Hush from the
other side of town, we slowed at an intersection and passed a teen
crossing on foot. When the boy saw who was at the wheel, he called
out Kwaw’s catchphrase “Abodam!” through the open window.
When asked what the word means, Kwaw pounds a ﬁst to his right
temple and says, “It’s a word that deﬁnes the extreme madness for
what you are doing. Being mad for who you are. Not madness in the
streets, but being mad for what you want to do. Everybody says
it now.”
Hammer, meanwhile, best represents this madness among the
engineers, the Ghanian term for those who, in the US, would be
called producers. He is heavily influenced by Dr Dre and Scott
Storch, and makes no apologies for his decidedly American sound.
“I don’t want to be part of this highlife bullshit,” he says in Hush
Hush’s hallway. “People who rap are using highlife beats now and
it’s wrong. I am hip-hop. Highlife should be where it is.”
But on other days and nights in Hush Hush, and other studios
all over Accra, there are artists who disagree, producing hiplife
that accepts Ghana’s highlife past and incorporates it. Engineers
like Jay Q, Appietus, Agyingo, Morris, Borax, Quick Action and Roro
are making bass heavy club bangers accented with traditional
Kwaw Kese in his hometown of Agona Swedru.

T H E FADER 1 29

H IPL IFE

Poncho in Homebase Studio.

1 3 2 T H E FA DE R

T H E FADER 1 33

H IPLIFE

rhythms. They are held together with farty instrument samples and
live percussion for singers and rappers who mix Twi or Fante with
a healthy portion of patois English, and are just as likely to have
grown up on Sizzla and Buju Banton as Snoop Dogg.
The most visible of these singers is Batman Samini, also known
as the Rain God. His own songs are everywhere, his face is on ads
and products, and he’s already won a Music of Black Origin award
in Europe. But more indicative of his stardom is his ubiquity on
other artist’s songs. His signature “Boi!” is heard as frequently in
Accra as Akon’s “Konvict” is in the States (and Accra). He’s blessed
with good looks and a rumbling ragga voice, and these days any
boy who wants to be a hiplife star tries to sound like him. His last
album Batman was released in 2006, but its songs are still in heavy
rotation on both radio stations like VibeFM and Hitz Video, one of
the growing number of 106 & Park-style shows on Ghanaian TV.
And “African Lady,” the aforementioned MOBO winner, might be
in rotation until the end of time. It is the quintessential party jam
of the new hiplife, where tempos jack, djamas pepper the gaps
between thumps, guitars cluck like chickens and euphoric choruses
are always in major.
When the sun goes down in Accra, the speaker stacks in front of
shops are wheeled in just as others are wheeled out in front of
bars and clubs. If the kids go home to change, they do it fast. The
sidewalks never empty and the only noticeable difference is an
uptick in speaker volume from deafening to more deafening. At

“I DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF THIS
HIGHLIFE BULLSHIT. PEOPLE WHO
RAP ARE USING HIGHLIFE BEATS
NOW AND IT’S WRONG. HIGHLIFE
SHOULD BE WHERE IT IS.” —HAMMER
Strawberry’s in Adabraka, the Sunday night scene reaches its apex
around two in the morning, just at the point when non-Ghanaians
might fall face ﬁrst on to the street after too much sha-sha smoke
and large Star beers. It’s also one of the places in town where a
writer might ﬁnd himself in a conversation with a struggling singer,
a rastaman sage and a prostitute all at the same plastic table. At
some point, the entire crowd will move to another “last hour” club
down the street for another soundsystem and more dancing, but
only after wearing out Strawberry’s supplies. The songs heard
over and over include Mzbel’s “I’m in Love” and Sidney’s “African
Money,” but also imported hiplife from Nigerian practioners like
2Face Idiba.
2Face has become a major star in Africa based on a grip of hit
songs recorded with Ghana’s hiplife establishment. The biggest,
“My Love,” engineered by hiplife man of the moment Appietus,
could have easily been recorded by a Ghanaian, but then, no one
but Ghanaians would’ve heard it. This is the paradox of hiplife:
it’s the biggest music in Africa, but its native artists can’t make it
out of Ghana. Every hiplifer voices frustrations over the country’s
incompetent music industry and the open payola with radio’s top
DJs, but very few have any ideas of how to circumvent the existing
system. They don’t attempt to operate independently because,
ultimately, independence requires money, which not many of them
have. The cycle of getting some where there is none, to record a
song to play for a producer who might fund further recordings, puts
most of the power in the hands of “businessmen” with a tenuous
Kwaw Kese and friends.

T H E FADER 135

H IPL IFE

grasp on business and/or music. (One of these businessmen, Alex
Frimpong, owner of Lexyfri Productions and the money behind
Batman’s rise, threatened to kill a regional police chief last summer
after his four-acre marijuana farm was raided, despite his claim
to have bribed the local Wenchi police with 25 million cedis.).
When I ask engineer Agyingo at Hush Hush how an underground
talent gets his music heard if he doesn’t have cash, his answer is,
“They don’t.”
Given this—and taking a cue from the industry at large—hiplife
is slowly crossing the digital divide. KKC, a group based in the
Northern Region town of Tamale, ﬁnanced the production of their
third album with a bank loan and hustled, working in and out of
music, to repay it. They haven’t been able to release another one in
the four years since, but they don’t seem too bothered. “It’s in our
blood,” says Lil Malik, one half of KKC. “It is always a part of our
life, and always will be. We are working hard to get attention and
record more songs, but if we do not, it does not mean we will stop
making music.”
Back in Accra, living in a neighborhood not planned by Kwame
Nkrumah, are the underground boys that aren’t supposed to
exist. Through a large swinging gate and into a courtyard shared
by two small houses, there are a couple teens washing clothes
in plastic tubs. No one says anything but “hello” and nothing
suggests a reason for why I might be there. Walks and taxi rides
begin ambiguously in this city, wind through much human trafﬁc,
and end up anywhere from a Portuguese castle to a fufu joint

“IT IS ALWAYS A PART OF OUR LIFE,
AND ALWAYS WILL BE.
WE ARE WORKING HARD TO GET
ATTENTION AND RECORD MORE
OF OUR SONGS, BUT IF WE DO NOT,
IT DOES NOT MEAN WE WILL STOP
MAKING MUSIC.”—LIL MALIK OF KKC
near Jamestown to the Botanical Gardens in the Aburi hills. The
overriding attitude is to take things as they come. Inside the tiny
house and down the short hall wallpapered with a giant Tupac
poster is Homebase Studio, home base to engineer Kali Process
and ragga singer Poncho.
Kali pops in and out of the closet studio to ﬁx glitches on the
computer (they have one, which is rare), bring beers and restart
the Richie Spice documentary they’d been hypnotized by for an
hour. Poncho, one of the launderers from the courtyard, sings over
anything that comes over the computer speakers—hiplife videos,
the aforementioned Richie Spice joints and, ultimately, the new
songs he and Kali have recorded. One of these, “Obaa Weya,” is as
good as any song I’d heard on the radio or at clubs while in Accra.
The always smiling Poncho toasts over the instrumental from inside
the booth, in the hallway and in the yard, gesticulating more wildly
and getting more hoarse with each rendition.
Kali and Poncho are one of the few crews going for their own in a
city hindered by its own bureaucracy. They talk to me about Paypal,
MySpace and YouTube, by far the most tech-savvy artists I’ve met all
week. But that night, Poncho was just the biggest star in his
courtyard, performing for an audience of mothers, sisters, neighbors
and kids, the littlest of which gathered around him and danced as
he sang at the top of his lungs. After a week of studio sessions and
exhausting nightlife, this was my ﬁrst real live hiplife show. &
Poncho in his Accra neighborhood.

LEFT: DRESS BY ISSA, SHOES BY MICHEL PERRY AND JEWELRY BY NOIR.
SUIT BY ISSEY MIYAKE, SHIRT BY JUST CAVALLI, SHOES BY PAUL SMITH AND HAT BY MAKINS. DRESS BY MARA HOFFMAN
AND SHOES BY MICHEL PERRY.

T H E FADER 1 47

DRESS BY MARA HOFFMAN.
1 4 8 T H E FA D E R

T H E FADER 149

GP

VINYL ARCHEOLOGY
SECOND LIFE
THE SYNTHESIZER SOUNDS OF WEST AFRICA

Omanhene Pozoh Aye De,
Vol 2 (Super Kaas Music
Productions 2001)
Omanhene Pozoh made people
pay attention to his relatively
forgettable hiplife album by
dressing up “Kyenkyen Bi Adi
Mawu,” its first track, with the
best and funkiest highlife groove
ever. Then he invited the
sample’s originator to re-sing
it. Does it matter that Reggie
Rockstone, the undisputed king
of hiplife, already took his own
version of “Kyenkyen” to the
bank a few years prior? Nah.
Pozoh slapped a fresh drum
program and synth horns on
that not-so-dusty riddim and
called it a day. Elderly highlife
artists hoped this would
become a consistent trend,
thereby ensuring their luminous
role in the rising tide of digital
youth culture. It didn’t.

Odorkor Carnival hosted by Precious Soundz, 2005.

When I arrived in Ghana in 2002 for a five month stay I was told highlife—the local music driven
by guitars and sweet vocals that had drawn me to West Africa in the first place—was dead. It had been
replaced by hiplife, a clunky, still-developing fusion of rap and highlife created by urban youth. So I began
to accumulate tapes to find out why. Musicians in Africa first started using drum machines during the late
’70s, but it wasn’t until recently that secondhand personal computers and pirated sequencing programs
became more widely available there. Now in Africa, like around the rest of the planet, teenagers huddle
around old Pentium 3s making beats with Fruity Loops or stacking vocal tracks in ProTools. Though
at times it seems like the continent’s youth are in the midst of a digital revolution, this sonic upheaval
actually began gradually. The following is a selected history of the synthesizer’s travels through parts
of West Africa.

Umaru Sanda Dariya Da
Makiya (Amenu Alhaji
Issaku & Francis Obey
date unknown)
This isn’t just another tape of
eerily saccharine Hausa praise
music set to a bouncy beat.
(Take my word for it, there are
tons.) Keyboard sounds you
never thought possible compete
with a barrage of talking drums
and 808 shakers, whistles and
bells. Analog synths sound out
sparse—and often epic—lines
over slow-developing rhythmic
freakouts. And Sanda’s echoey
vocal calls, mirrored by a chorus
of munchkin responses, is some
Japan-meets-Iran-at-a-shoppingmall-in-the-future shit. I’m all
over this tape for its haunted
sense of happiness and alluring
promise of a trip to Hot Topic.

Buk Bak Nkomshe (Abib
Records 2001)
Before he became the Babyface
of hiplife, the man once known
as Jeff Quaye played behindthe-scenes mastermind to this
underrated electro hiplife opus.
The sheer breadth of sounds
and styles Jay Q employs here
helped define the mainstream
hiplife sound through the last
half-decade or so. He once told
me he used the dzama rhythm
of his people—the Ga—to
fashion a new hiplife-friendly
groove. Dzama was a huge
success and biters followed,
making this a landmark hiplife
recording. It also helped that
Buk Bak are fucking geniuses
who’ve been running shit
forever.
Samaya Djeli dite Mah
Kouyate no 1 Samaya Djeli
dite Mah Kouyate no 1,
Vol 1 (Camara Production
2004)
Mah Kouyate no 1—dubbed as
such because there is another,
younger singer named Mah
Kouyate no 2—has long been
known in Mali (and beyond) for
her husky, plaintive voice, but
Kouyate’s band Samaya Djeli
is the reason to die for this
tape. Even the acidic blasts of
Kouyate’s vocals can’t match the
swirling synth kora and vibrato
keyboard vamps. The Arthur
Russell-meets-Cybotron congas
and synths make “Fila Djole”
the deepest cut, but Samaya
Djeli kill it on pretty much every
song here with seven-minuteplus essays on minimalism as
maximalism.

Prince Okla Tei Togsi
(I.K’s Production date
unknown)
This is feel good music from
another planet. Prince Okla
sounds like a Ghanaian Daniel
Johnston; out of tune vocals
recorded at awkward levels
rubbing against clipped timbale
cracks and “smooth trumpet”
Casio stabs. When I met Okla
in 2002, this tape had already
made its mark. Following its
release in the late ’90s, Tei Togsi
helped form a blueprint for the
current wave of corny Northern
Ghana jams—a synthesizercentric clash of reggae, electro
pop, Bollywood and local flavors.

Sirina Issah Cheer the
Stars (Self-released 1994)
Blessed Gregory, the man who
produced Sirina Issah’s 1994
landmark Cheer the Stars, must
be a nut for Jellybean or Little
Louie Vega. To foreign ears this
is seriously bizarro music, but
it’s by no means simply juvenile
pop experimentation at the
dawn of electronic adventures.
These are some of the most
sublime and honest teen dance
jams I’ve heard. With cameos
by an audibly prepubescent Big
Adams (Northern Ghana’s first
rap icon), this tape is both a
historical milestone as the first
recording to feature a Northern
rapper, and an adorable
reminder of how it’s teenagers
themselves who can best make
life-changing bubblegum pop.
Even in dusty yam-farming lands.

Various Artists 13 Recordz
présente Vrai 2 Vrai 12ground Prophecy (13
Recordz 2004)
While traveling for the first time
to Ouagadougou, the capital of
Burkina Faso, I met an Indian
bicycle parts salesman who
showed me a cheap hotel close
to the center of town. Next to
that hotel was a wooden shack
of a music shop. I asked the
dudes behind the desk about
Burkinabé rap and they said this
compilation was “serious.” They
were right. That sick ’93 shit we
used to love is alive and well
and living in Burkina Faso.

Daasebre Gymenah U
Can’t Touch Me (CSP
2001)
Once sequencers and digital
processing became firmly
entrenched in Ghana, highlife
music no longer sounded like
sleepy dudes singing beautifully
over thuddy drums and plunky
guitars (unfortunately). With so
many new options, producers
would use, like, two to three
billion different keyboard tones
on one song. Thankfully some
artists practiced restraint and
still turned out monster hits.
Daasebre Gymenah carefully
evokes the spirit of pre-crack
Bobby Brown to make this a
classic. When this first came
out I once counted how many
times in one day I could hear
Daasebre’s smooth croon bless
the radio waves while walking
around the city. The answer
was 15. Bonus: there’s enough
voicebox on this tape to sink
T-Pain’s battleship.

Brian Shimkovitz’s website Awesome Tapes From Africa features cassettes he collected while living and traveling in West Africa on
a Fulbright grant. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
1 5 0 T HE FA D E R

Cymande Promised Heights (Newhouse Records)
I played the saxophone in middle school because I wanted
to sound like this; Lisa Simpson, Bill Clinton and Cymande. I
didn’t know Cymande, of course, but if I had to invent music
in my mind to be 7th grade cool, this was it. “Brother’s on the
Slide” from this Promised Heights reissue is forever in the
pocket, but if I wanted to jam anything that cool-cat I should
have been forever in my bedroom practicing. I wasn’t, so now
I write about music instead of playing it. MS

Bon Iver For
Emma, Forever Ago
(Jagjaguwar)
Bon Iver is actually
bearded songsmith Justin
Vernon and while you’re
apparently supposed
to pronounce it “bohneevair” (French for “good
winter”), this isn’t some
high-brow Euro folk
made for cobblestone
meandering. Instead,
Vernon’s songs are
Wisconsin backwoods
laments at their most
frigidly worn, his light wisp
sounding pretty distraught
over (assumingly) Emma,
but maybe even more
over the fact that it’s
just so damn cold out
and there’s no one else
around to share some
body heat. In search
of relief, dude actually
chopped his own wood
to heat his cabin while
recording, but the tunes
still sound like sonic
hibernation. SD

Nick Lowe Jesus
of Cool: 30th
Anniversary Edition
(Yep Roc Records)
Not to be confused with
weepy Nick Drake or
handsome Rob Lowe,
English songsmith Nick
Lowe is often best
remembered because of
the people who covered
his tunes—most notably
Elvis Costello’s famous
take on “(What’s So
Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love,
1 52 T HE FA D E R

and Understanding.”
This souped-up reissue
of Lowe’s seminal Jesus
of Cool proves that the
best way to keep people
talking about your record
in 30 years (aside from
awesomely calling it Jesus
of Cool) is to write a
dozen songs that basically
predict the next three
decades of British pop
music. Originally released
in the states under the
title Pure Pop for Now
People, this is one of
those records that lots
of music nerds reference
but few actually own.
TCR

DJ Magic Mike Bass
Head (Cheetah)
A gigantic bass blast
for your face and your
external hard drive, the
two disc Bass Head
collects five albums and
three singles from Miami
legend DJ Magic Mike
in mp3 format. Domino’s
Pizza’s The Noid, a
“Droooooop!” screaming
Ad-Rock and a bunch of
other assholes show up
in the mix as track after
track rocks and freaks.
You won’t find a better
soundtrack for leaving
anonymous comments
on Brooklyn Vegan, that
is if your laptop doesn’t
explode. ED

Various Artists
Droppin’ Science
(Blue Note Records)
Is US3 to Herbie
Hancock as Richard
Prince is to the Marlboro
Man? Or maybe Madlib
is to Blue Note Records
as Richard Rauschenberg
is to flags, goats and
newspapers. At least
Blue Note hopes so.
This compilation of the
label’s popularly sampled
songs is arbitrary but
enlightening, evoking
stodgy men pushing up
their noses at snotty
kids while really wanting
to get in on the action.
But, really, if you think
about it, sampling is kind
of weird. They made it
and other people took
it and then we liked it
because they made it but
only remember the other
people. Everything is
everything, or something.
MS

Gary Higgins Red
Hash (Drag City)
I know it’s kinda lame
to pull this card, but I’ve
been trying to listen to
as much vinyl as I can
lately, mostly because it
stops me from skipping
around albums too much
and actually gets me to
really listen to things.
Thankfully, Drag City
is reissuing this weirdo
psychfolk album in LP
form so I can sit in a big
drug rug draped chair

GP

MIXTAPE
MUSICS

feigned indifference. Still,
when the band left the
stage so Beck could trot
out some folk numbers,
my friend Cheri got teary
eyed. I made fun of her.
TCR

with a glass of wine and
a “jazz cigarette” while
stroking my beard as this
plays out over and over.
Actually, some of these
songs are really heavy
but they still play out
in my head as cartoon
dragons drinking mead,
and at this point in my
life there could be worse
imagery floating around in
there. SHS

Various Artists
Umalali: The
Garifuna Women’s
Project (Cumbancha)
What does it say about
me that I am I drawn
to music with women
yelling? Probably nothing
good. Well, happy/sad
news for me is Umalali:
Garifuna Women’s
Project, an album of
oldish ladies in Belize
belting it. “Umalali”
means “voice” in the
Garifuna language, and
that is the focus here,
pangs and shrieks like
baby birds. I cannot
imagine opening
my mouth and having
something beautiful
come out, and maybe
this interest stems
from jealousy and
confusion, because these
grandmother squeals
have me piqued. MS

1 5 4 T HE FA DE R

Various Artists Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, AfroSounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6 (Soundway)
Like rap lyrics, FADER CD reviews are exercises in restating
a basic theme, ie this CD is awesome. So let me just cut to the
chase and say that on a scale of medium-awesome to super
major, this two CD set is real, real good. It is 26 tracks of
revelatory funk recorded by dudes named Celestine Ukwu
and Semi Colon (not made up). It is also a beautiful object—
the kind that will make even vinyl heads mourn the imminent
death of the compact disc—with extensive liner notes, photos
and some 40 color reproductions of the original albums and
labels. You can tell how deep it is just by the overwrought
specificity of the title, like they’re too purist to fucks with
highlife after ’76…Or more likely, the Afro-Sounds in ’77 were
so bone-crushingly superlative they still need a box set of
their own. ESH

Canyons The
Lovemore EP (Hole
In The Sky)
My relationship with
disco in the past has
been fairly tenuous, I
think there was a point
when I hated it because
in Detroit Rock City,
Edward Furlong and that
guy that looks like Jason
Mewes really hated it.
But I didn’t like KISS,
either, so why was I
trying to empathize with
them? I came around
eventually and discovered
that hippie disco was
right up my alley. That’s
why Canyons work
for me—they use the
repetitive and propelling
disco backbeat to go
off in all sorts of weird
directions, accenting their
songs with train whistles
and wind chimes and
making everything sound
totally organic. SHS

Beck Odelay: Deluxe
Edition (Universal)
I saw Beck on the Odelay
tour at the Will Rogers
Theater in Oklahoma
City. I was in college and
I remember that I drove
about nine pot-smokin
people to the show in
my ’77 Mercury Cougar
and that Beck’s band had
matching outfits and a
few choreographed dance
moves. Beck had suddenly
become almost too
popular for us to admit
that we loved him, so I

Various Artists Living
Bridge (Rare Book
Room Records)
Despite what the spooky,
hippie-flavored cover art
might lead you to believe,
the inaugural release
from Brooklyn’s Rare
Book Room Records is
not a collection of wicca
chants. It’s better. This
awesome two-disc set
collects a bevy of neverbefore-heard tracks by
folks who have recorded
at the Rare Book Room
Recording studios (the
label’s namesake) and the
tracklist basically reads
like the seating chart of
the “cool” table at some
great indie-rock cafeteria.
Avey Tare, Black Dice,
Deerhunter, and The
Naysayer are saving you
a seat, as long as you
don’t mind sitting next to
Fischerspooner too. TCR

Cover Story:
Album Cover Art
(Wax Poetics)
Old album covers
look way cooler to me
than new ones. Not to
say that there aren’t
some modern visual
jams that I am feeling
hard, but I kinda wish
covers still existed
that were basically
just photos of dudes
smiling because their
lives are pretty nice, or
just weird, unfinished
line drawings of
dolphin heads. This
book collects the
aforementioned
covers, selected by
Wax Poetics writers for
their personal value or
underlying theme. On
their own, the covers
look great, but together
reveal a secret history
of people who have
made listening to music
their life. There are
probably sentimental
stories behind most of
these selections, but
we’ll never know them,
because we wouldn’t
understand. SHS
Tiffany Godoy Style Deficit
Disorder: Harajuku Street
Fashion Tokyo (Chronicle
Books)
Harajuku is a style of being as
much as it is a square-mile
shopping chunk of Tokyo
City, and Tiffany Godoy’s Style
Deficit Disorder is an awesome
encyclopedic breakdown of the
place. The book is divided into
chapters on all the brands, zines,
bands, stylists and miscellaneous
wonderful weirdos that have
drifted in and out of Harajuku
history, from cult figures like

1 5 6 T H E FA D E R

HOT
CHIP
MADE INHOT
THECHIP
DARK
MADEININTHE
THEDARK
DARK
MADE

Goth-Lolita drag queen Mana
to international players like
Nigo and Hiroshi Fujiwara.
Godoy invites other Japanese
fashion luminaries to weigh
in on the culture in between,
but it’s the archival imagery—
cheeky late ’90s Hysteric
Glamour campaigns, street
shots of fro’d out skateboard
crews from the ’70s, and shots
of Bowie getting fitted in a
mini-Kimono—that give you
a sense of the phenomenon
from all angles. CN
Livia Corona Enanitos
Toreros (PowerHouse)
Six years ago, back when we’d
order hangover breakfast from
Lemon Lime and run Gen
Fs on Tricky’s new dancehall
protégé, Livia Corona came
by the office from California
to show us her photographs
of a bullfighting troupe of
little people that she traveled
around Mexico with. Oh,
hello awesome. Corona
shot some features for us
(including issue #12’s piece on
Cody Chesnutt and the west
coast black rock movement,
curious FADER archivists),
and now, after eight years of
following the bullfighers’ story,
Enanitos Toreros beautifully
collects Corona’s images
and interviews, telling a tale
of cabaret and community,
bravery and bravado. ED
Frank O’Hara Selected
Poems (Knopf)
In his poem “Ode To Joy,”
Frank O’Hara says, “We shall
have everything we want and
they’ll be no more dying on the
pretty plains or in the supper
clubs.” He did not die in a
supper club, nor on a pretty
plain, but on a beach, when
he was hit by a dune buggy
on Fire Island at the age of 40.
Until then he lived with real
force and brute class. The first
line of his poem “Now That I
Am In Madrid And Can Think”
is “I think of you” and there is
nothing more plainly perfect
than that. MS

Hot Chip’s third full length release
Hot
Chip’s
third
full
release
Hotand
Chip’s
third
full
length
release
the follow
up
tolength
their
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acclaimed
Thisalbum
is HotThe
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at its best;
This
is
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at
best;
Thiswonderfully
is Hot Chip quirky,
at its its
best;
clever,
wonderfully
quirky,
clever,
wonderfullysoulful
quirky,and
clever,
poppy.
soulful
poppy.
soulful
andand
poppy.
Featuring:Shake
ShakeAAFist,
Fist,
Featuring:
Featuring:
Shake A Fist,
ReadyFor
ForThe
TheFloor,
Floor,
Ready
Ready For The Floor,
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PureThought
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more
One
One
Pure Thought
+ more

MIXTAPE
DVDS
AFRICAN DVDS ALL THE WAY FROM FLATBUSH, BROOKLYN
COMPILED BY SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH, PETER MACIA

Power of Love 2
(Elonel International)
Power Of Love 2 is built
around revenge and
deceit. In the first five
minutes a woman gets
purposefully hit by a car
driven by another woman.
Cheating is involved.
Midway through this,
Mobolaji walked in and
asked me if the main
dude was Ramsey. I had
no idea what he was
talking about, but when
I looked it up it turns
out that, yeah, it is an
actor named Ramsey.
So I learned two things
from this film: one, love
is powerful but often
tested by equally powerful
outside forces, and two,
Mobolaji knows a lot
about low budget African
cinema. SHS

Love Comes Back
(Straight Hustler
Entertainment)
Okay so basically: A
businessman named
Henry inherits his boss’s
company. He also enters
into an arranged marriage
with Mona, his boss’s
daughter. After Mona’s
parents die in a car
accident (not shown),
Henry marries Mona,
moves into her estate and
runs her father’s company,
driving around in a
convertible blasting 2pac
and cheating on Mona,
who finds out and cheats
on him back, but actually
falls in love. This results
in a murder and Mona
going to jail while Henry
gets remarried. There are
some incredibly relaxing
scenes throughout
though, like the full
minute of Henry putting
his convertible roof up
after he parks his car.
In fact, key story points
are often glossed over in
favor of extended scenes
involving Henry’s car and
the different parking lots
it goes to—hypnotically
driving from place to
place, “Changes” playing
in the background, always
going the speed limit. SHS

State of Emergency (Ossy Affason Ind.)
If more movies started with a dude kneeling to propose
marriage in a Santa Claus suit, I think we’d find Hollywood
in better sorts. State of Emergency doesn’t start that way, but
the trailer preceding it does, which doesn’t say much about
Teco Benson’s action thriller but did get me hyped to watch
it. State of Emergency is action packed as long as you have fast
forward. (No shit, this movie is two hours long and I swear an
hour of that is dudes forgetting their lines.) First five minutes:
two women dead from gut shots, mysterious symbols dripped
on the floor with their blood, symbols match a symbol
from one of the detective’s old army photos, victims related to
prominent government officials. Rest of the movie: terrorists
responsible for killings hold official dads hostage in a cool
conference center, detective battles demons. And terrorists.
SPOILER: Demons and terrorists lose. PM

1 5 8 T HE FA D E R

Magic Cap 2 (Divine
Touch Productions)
This review from
Africanmovieplace.com
really captures what
this movie is all about
better than I ever could:
“Nya, played by Osita
Iheme, and Aba, played
by Chinedu Ikedieze,
are from two extremely
different financial
backgrounds. Nya asked
his father why they are
so poor and his father
attributes it to generational
poverty. Aba on the other
hand asked his father how
he became very rich and
his father answer was
hard work. Watch as
they both hook up and
decides to make money
by any means possible as
long as it does not involve
hard work. This hilarous
comedy is a must see.” PM

GP

REHEATERS
SWINGIN’ ADDIS
THE CONTINUED INFLUENCE OF ETHIOPIQUES

A

ddis Ababa, Ethiopia in
the 1970s was probably
one of the coolest places
on Earth. Electrified xylophones,
seedy saxophone trios, bejeweled
tie clips and Amharic blues were
all part of a seemingly endless
supply of brilliance that the
23-part Ethiopiques series has
chronicled since 1998. Thanks to
these compilations and reissues,
Ethiopia’s musical influence has
been soaked in by everyone from
Kanye West to Jim Jarmusch,
the Ex to Adrian Orange. Even
ATLiens the Black Lips have
opened up to the sound, covering
Teshome Meteku’s “Hasabé”
from Ethiopiques Vol 1: The Golden
Years of Modern Music on a 7inch to be released by Chunklet
magazine. As Cole Alexander,
the band’s guitarist/vocalist
explains, “My stepfather does
AIDS research in Africa. One day
he brought home a bootleg of
Ethiopian music called Swingin’
Addis. I really dug the production,
but didn’t realize it was [part
of ] this great comp series until
much later when I started hearing
that familiar sound in clubs and
in movies. One of my favorite
guys on Swingin’ Addis is Samuel
Belay and I’m always hoping to
find more from him. I asked my
step-dad to find it but he’s not an
ethnomusicologist so I’ll probably
never know what else from him
lies out there. PS Ethiopian girls
are really hot.” MATTHEW SCHNIPPER

1 6 0 T H E FA D E R

GP

JEDI MIND PIX
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
FAVORED TUNES FROM FAVORITE DJS

QUEEN MAJESTY
As part of Deady Dragon Soundsystem, Queen
Majesty has been delving into her incredibly
deep crates every Monday night on East Village
Radio from 6-8pm, and at various gigs around
New York. Most recently Queen Majesty
released Trilla, a mixtape collecting her favorite
Jamaican covers of American songs. For more
info see myspace.com/queenmajesty

Beenie Man “Follow
Me” (Striker Lee/
Deadly Dragon)
Coming off of Beenie
Man’s debut album, The
Invincible Beenie Man: The
10 Year Old DJ Wonder,
Deadly Dragon and Striker
Lee have just put out this
tune on 45 for the very
first time. He was 10 years
old when he recorded this
tune and it’s wicked! Classic
’80s dancehall on what
sounds very similar to the
General riddim.

Alborosie “Guess
Who’s Coming to
Dinner” (Forward
Recordings)
By now, everyone should
know Black Uhuru’s
“Guess Who’s Coming to
Dinner,” but the Sicilian
expat/Jamaican transplant
Alborosie drops his
own lyrics over this selfproduced take on the
song. The heavy bassline
and bouncy delivery are
infectious enough to make
you forget comparisons
to Collie Buddz for a few
minutes.
1 6 2 T H E FA D E R

King Kong “My
Darling” (Jammy’s)
I am now officially calling
the Hot Lava riddim
underrated. I have never
heard any other songs on
it except for this one, but
apparently there’s quite a
few. It’s digital, it’s upbeat,
it’s fun. There’s synthesized
hand claps and most of
all, it has King Kong on it.
If you love Tenor Saw or
Nitty Gritty then you will
love King Kong. And I’m
sure you can play it after
a Teddybears track or
something.

Bastard Jazz 3, “Ginga
Snaps” (Bastard Jazz)
This 12-inch has been one
of my favorites to play
since DJ DRM gave it to
me last summer. Most of
the hip-hop-over-reggae
remixes I’ve found on 45
are poorly produced and
sound forced. However,
Bastard Jazz has taken
Lil Kim’s “Lighters Up”
and skillfully put it with a
subtly dubbed out reggae
instrumental.

JOKERS OF THE SCENE
These Ottawa DJs/Producers/Promoters/Fool’s
Gold signees are pretty much everywhere these
days, throwing their monthly “Disorganised”
parties and remixing everyone from Blaqstarr
to Apostle of Hustle. Jokers Chameleonic and
DJ Booth will probably be DJing a party near
you. See if we’re telling the truth at
myspace.com/sceneofthejoker

JEFFREY SFIRE
Detroit by way of Chicago and NYC, DJ Jeffrey
Sfire has been playing out italo disco, house
and generally any record that will compel
you to dance all over the globe since he was
a teenager. Currently he is a part of the
impressive roster of Ghostly International DJs
and releases his Menergy mixes regularly for
download at sfire.org.

his quest to produce the
genre’s first proper full
length release and “911” is
an early indication that the
entire album is gonna make
some serious noise. “911”
centers itself around a dirty
electro bass line, Brooklyn
MC Stimulus’ stutter
raps, and chopped up
breakbeats galore. A rapid
succession of Mentasm
samples push the tune into
overdrive and makes it the
perfect tool to transition
between club bangers and
a full on dancefloor audio
assault.

closer you are, the more
you see them, their life
and their troubles in
the work. After hearing
lyrics over the phone
and talking for hours
about love, sex, family
and music, this album
is beyond genuine. It
is a delicately crafted
house music narrative.
Influenced by the Detroit
and Chicago sounds, you
can’t help but pay close
attention to everything.

Crookers, “Knobbers”
(Southern Fried)
These bass-happy Italian
jackmasters finally flipped
the fidget script and found
their own sound with this
epic banger! Blurring the
boundaries between italo
disco, euro-trance, and a
medieval feast results in
some serious dancefloor
devastation. Trust us when
we say that their debut
record is not what you’re
going to expect—Crookers
have matured from BUM
BUM house masters into
something entirely unique,
exciting, and above all
BANGIN!

Tittsworth ft Stimulus
“911” (Plant Music)
Jesse Tittsworth is about
to deliver his debut LP and
heads ain’t ready! If you’re
expecting a continuous
stream of bootleg
Baltimore club remixes of
Time Life’s Greatest Hits
of the ’70’s series then
you’re going to be rather
disappointed. Titts has
laboriously collected a
wide variety of guests in

Jokers of the Scene
“Y’all Know the Name
(Nacho Lovers 100%
Remix)” (Fool’s Gold)
We gotta throw this one
in there simply because the
Toronto upstart production
duo of Fist Fight and Scott
Seewhale knocked their
debut remix straight outta
the park. Taking it back to
the early ’90’s, the Nachos’
love of Armando and
Kenny Dope is evident as
they splice those sounds up
with a stuttering Pharoahe
Monch sample. Watch for
the drop at the 2:16 mark
as the most adventurous
dancefloors take it back to
the future. Keep your eyes
on these guys!

Patrick Cowley Mind
Warp (Megatone)
If you have any interest
in disco at all you
should know and love
Patrick Cowley. One of
America’s most important
disco producers, he
was a genius at synth
programming and way
ahead of his time. This
was his last release before
he died from AIDS in
1982. I can’t even imagine
what it must have felt like
to be in San Francisco
when this was released.
An evil future was taking
lives relentlessly, ending
an era of complete
freedom. It’s a warning of
what’s to come, and he
couldn’t have been more
right. The ominous and
very sad “Going Home”
was supposedly the last
song he recorded.

Prosumer and Murat
Tepeli Serenity
(Ostgut Tonträger)
Interpreting someone’s art
is a completely different
thing when you’re friends
with the art-maker. The

.
John Rocca “I
Want it to be Real”
(Streetwise)
Every time I play this song,
someone totally awesome
tells me how psyched he
or she is that I played it.
Last week, it was Morgan
Geist, kinda the coolest
one so far, no big deal.
Even the bitchy lady at
Secondhand Rose in NYC
let down her guard to
mention how much she
loves it. If this song does
not make you dance,
something is seriously
wrong. It’s one of those
“Hey everyone stop what
you’re doing and come
dance with the gang!”
kinda songs. The title
is also my new motto.
REAL REAL REAL!

COMPILED BY EDWIN “STATS” HOUGHTON, PETER MACIA

PHOTOGRAPHY BEAU GREALY

Commando South
African Brandy
I just bought this because
the word commando and
the holster-ready flask size
and the ye-olde-ruff-riders
graphic on the label jumped
out at me from behind the
plexi-glass in the shebeen
section of Cheeks nightclub
in Alexandra. Not to
drink—cause I just assumed
it was pure poison—but
more to rock conspicuously
around the block party
like a pocket square and
then keep the bottle on
my bookshelf at home with
a daisy or something in it.
And yet. I will be verdammt
if it isn’t as mellow as the
liner notes suggest, the
kind of spirit you can swig
from a flask and not get
crazy heartburn or those
headache-y vapors, better,
in fact, than most of the
“top-shelf” brandy I’ve ever
had. ESH

anywhere outside of your
hotel, a giant Star only
costs the equivalent of 75
cents, which is cheaper
than a bag of water. PM
“Bitters”
In quotes because although
there is an actual branded
bitters, Alomo, you will
most likely get the local
version poured or ladled
from a big bucket with
stuff floating in it. Similar
to a snake wine I once
drank with a dude named
Five in Vietnam, bitters is
harsh yet rewarding and
will win you friends among
the locals. It’s made of
barks and roots and things
like that, and I honestly
wouldn’t recommend
it unless all other booze
disappears from Earth.
However, according
to the guys I drank with,
it has made me a man.
Finally! PM

Klipdrift South African
Brandy
South Africa is famous for
quality brandy and this
is the stuff people were
stocking up on in the duty
free shop at Tambo airport
so I went with it. It has an
almost grapevine taste, like
you can taste the fact that
brandy is actually distilled
wine, possibly because I
poured too much and was
hitting it out of a white
wine glass instead of
a snifter. I actually found

1 6 4 T H E FA DE R

this less to my taste than,
say, Commando but it is
nonetheless quality liqs, and
truth be told I can’t really
drink actual wine at all, so
connoisseurs get in where
you fit. ESH
Star Lager
Guinness Ghana brews this
sucker at 7% alcohol and
most bars prefer to give it
to you in 22 ounce bottles.
Combine that with dry
season and odds are good
you will be drunk after one

The Block
The Fader
Other Music
Mark Ronson
Beacon’s Closet
Turntable Lab Radio
Academy Records Radio

station designed by Christain Wassmann

but so thirsty that you will
buy three. Don’t worry
though, it’s light in aroma
and calories, so when you
fall asleep on the sidewalk it
will be pleasant and painless
for the police to carry you
off to jail. Currently, there
are several competitors
for favorite beer status in
Accra (Ghana’s capital),
most notably Stone and
Club lagers, but they’re
only half as strong and
taste shitty with fufu and
tilapia. Plus, if you drink it

â&#x20AC;˘ Forever ago, back in last December, we
were 50 issues old, 50 issues awesome. To
celebrate, we parked a new 2008 Ford Focus
out front of the Bowery Ballroom and invited
White Williams, Justice and Mos Def in to
perform, along with DJ Enuff of the Pepsi DJ
Division, spinning classics. Southern Comfort
and Bud Select provided libations and we were
a little fizzled by nights end (and mornings
beginning), but still solid footed enough to
revel like champions.

PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG

1 6 6 T HE FA DE R

T H E FADER 167

GP

EVENTS
FADER 51 IS#UE RELEASE PARTY
SANTOGOLDEN

A BASS ALE EVENT

ALWAYS ENJOY RESPONSIBLY.

• We usually reserve Wednesday
nights for Project Runway, but we
had to curb our Nina Garcia fixation
for an evening to throw our FADER
51 release party aka Project Funway.
Zing! Bass Ale helped us loosen
up for Izza Kizza’s set (where he
rapped over the theme to Cheers)
and Santogold’s barnstorming
throwdown (complete with Public
Enemy S1W backup dancers!). Diplo
and Switch limbered loose some
electronic brittle for all the doe
eyed sirens making it a late night at
Brooklyn’s Studio B.

PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG

1 6 8 T H E FA D E R

T H E FADER 169

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW DOSUNMU DRESS BY TED BAKER SEQUIN TANK BY JC DE CASTELBAJAC AND PANTS BY DEVELOPMENT.

GP

STOCKISTS
WHERE TO BUY THE
LOOKS YOU LOVE

SUBSCRIBE!
'$&#!((&"

(&(#&'

The dancehall diaspora of Collie Buddz.

Daft Punkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quest to short circuit

minds and melt mainframes

The nomad noise of MIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kala

Bonde do Role is taking the world by storm
with their filthy Paulista funk. In the process,
they might just re-draw the map of Brazil.

Brickz Est’ekfeleni (Will of Steel
2007)
Est’ekfeleni, especially the dance anthem
“Left, Right,” is a window into the current
sound of mainstream kwaito. The album
also shows Brickz’s versatility. The DJ
Cleo-produced “Siyan’duduza” features
a zulu jive-ish Miriam Makeba throwback on
the sample, while “Carwash” captures the
mood of where the kwaito scene now
lives—carwashes, backyard BBQs and home
stereos, rather than the club scene it used
to dominate. ESH

Santana Caravanserai (Columbia
1972)
This is the first album Carlos and crew
made after the original Santana band
split up—most likely because he wanted
to move into the Miles fusion territory
explored here. Although generally less
metallic than some more famous Santana
joints, it’s definitely a blueprint for the way
BLK JKS mesh improvisation and riddimdriven elements within their rock. ESH

Since working with Esau Mwamwaya,
Etienne Tron and Johan Karlberg of
Radioclit have been dropping these Afrodance tracks at their Secousse party every
third Friday at the Notting Hill Arts Club
in London.

Various Artists Stokvel Hits, Vol 1
(Ghetto Ruff 2006)
Stokvel is a South African term for a group
of people who pool money for investment
purposes, but judging from the bottles all
over this CD’s album art you’d think it
was a brand of liquor. As a label, Ghetto
Ruff is a big player in the kwaito scene,
most notably as the home to Zola, a
heavyweight in the past who now is mostly
too occupied with his status as a UNICEF
youth ambassador to come around much.
This ’06 comp mixes joints from key
dudes Zola, Brickz and Drencko with
sleepers from lesser knowns like Zulu
Naja and Bleksom. ESH
Mapaputsi, Mzekezeke & Brown
Dash Kwaito Grooves (Ghetto Ruff
2005)
This is actually three artist albums in one
box set, though the Mapaputsi disc is
conspicuously missing from the copy I
brought back from South Africa. Mzekezeke
was more or less running kwaito when this
dropped. A masked rapper who could talk
as much smack as he liked (and did) ’cause
nobody knew who he was, he was soon
revealed to be radio DJ Sibusiso Leope and
kinda faded away, but his eight tracks are as
solid as anything that’s dropped since. ESH

1 74 T H E FA DE R

Busi Mhlongo Urbanzulu (MELT
2000 2000)
Mhlongo is a legendary South African
vocalist who can wail or whisper and
accompany herself with percussive tongue
clicks. Grounded in the Zulu maskanda
genre, this LP also incorporates rock, South
African jazz, Congolese pop and West
African kora—a summation of the pitbull’s
breakfast of influences that the Jacks came
up with in Jozi. Unsurprisingly they talk
about collaborating with her all the time.
ESH
Various Artists Afrika Underground
(Counterpoint 2002)
An invaluable overview of soul and funk
recorded in the Apartheid era, this comp is
also the only place short of a Soweto stoop
sale to pick up the work of the seminal
band Harari. Kind of like the Azymuth of
South Africa, they made a killing in the ’70s
putting a Zulu and Sotho spin on American
soul. Originally known as the Beaters, they
were the first black group featured on
South African TV and had a big effect on
the Jacks on any number of levels. ESH

Salif Keita vs Martin Solveig
“Madan” 12-inch (Mixture
Stereophonic 2002)
The fast beat, disco guitars and Keita’s
voice trading places with the chanted
female vocals make this track the ultimate
Radioclit club tune. ET
Various Artists The Indestructible
Beat of Soweto, Vol 1 (Shanachie
1986)
The lilting, almost-reggae groove of Nelcy
Sedibe’s “Holotelani” could have taught
Paul Simon everything he needed to know
before he did Graceland. ET
Various Artists True Romance
(Soundtrack) (Morgan Creek 1993)
“You’re So Cool” by Hans Zimmer comes
from the same soundtrack composer don
who also did the Lion King soundtrack
with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. This could
sound like African music just like it could
sound like a weird 19th century waltz. ET
DJ Znobia O Outro Lado (label
unknown 2006)
“Socoto 2038,” “Mono Mono,” the
“Comboio II” remix or any track by Znobia.
He is the absolute master of kuduro music,
the Daft Punk of Angola. ET

Bablee “Bableesamuz” 12-inch
(Uppercuts 2008)
This 12-inch should be coming out on our
label Uppercuts just about the same time
this issue hits the newsstand. Bablee is
raucous and amazing. This tune from the
Ivory Coast should change electronic music
forever. ET